The Invincible

THE DEFEAT

Rohan’s report sounded irrational, as true stories often do. Why hadn’t the cloud attacked him or Jarg? Why hadn’t it touched Terner until he got out of the amphibian vehicle? Why had Jarg first tried to escape, only to return later? The last question was fairly easy to answer. He probably decided to turn back the moment he stopped panicking and realized he was more than thirty miles away from the spaceship, which obviously couldn’t be reached on foot with his limited supply of oxygen.

The other questions, however, remained puzzles whose solution might mean life or death for them. But the need for action left no time for reflections and hypotheses.

It was past midnight when Horpach learned of the catastrophe that had befallen Rohan’s group. Half an hour later the astrogator was ready for takeoff. It is a thankless task to fly a spacecruiser to a spot only one hundred and twenty miles away. The ship must proceed at a relatively slow speed and at a right angle to the planet’s surface, standing vertically above its exhaust flames, and consuming a vast amount of fuel. Since the craft’s power drive had not been geared to this, they had to switch on the electro-automation. Nevertheless, the steel colossus floated softly through the night, as if carried by gently rolling waves. To any observer standing on Regis III, this would have presented a most unusual sight: the ship’s dim outline, hardly visible against the glow of the flames emanating from its rear jets, traveling through the night sky like a dark silhouette poised on a column of fire.

It was no small task to steer a proper course. They had to climb beyond the stratosphere, then descend again, all the while with stern pointing downwards, perpendicular to the ground.

All this maneuvering demanded the astrogator’s undivided attention, especially since their destination, the crater, lay hidden underneath a thin veil of clouds. Shortly before dawn, the Invincible set down in the crater, just over a mile away from Regnar’s former station. Supercopters and machines were quickly unloaded, huts erected within the protected area of the force field surrounding the spacecruiser. By noon, all survivors of Rohan’s group had been brought back safely by a specially equipped rescue team. None of the men was injured, except for a total loss of all mental functions. Two additional rooms had to be prepared as a sick bay, since every bed was occupied in the Invincible’s regular infirmary. Only now did the scientists try to probe the mystery that had spared Rohan’s life, and which — had it not been for the tragic incident with the Weyr mortar held by an insane man — would have saved Jarg as well.

It was a mystery. The clothing and equipment of the two men had been identical to that of the afflicted group. The fact that the three of them, Terner included, had been together in the small vehicle was probably of no significance either.

At the same time, Horpach had the unpleasant job of deciding how to proceed from here. One thing was clear: he could return to home base and present facts that would justify his terminating this mission, as well as facts that would clear up the tragic fate of the Condor. The questions that so intrigued the scientists — the metal pseudo-insects, their symbiosis with the metallic plants that grew on the rocks, and finally the questions regarding the “mind” of the cloud (they didn’t even know whether there was only one or several of these clouds, and whether all the small clouds formed a single closed system) — all that would not have induced the astrogator to remain one hour longer on Regis III if four men of Regnar’s group, Regnar himself among them, had not still been missing.

The trail of the lost men had led Rohan’s group into the ravine. The defenseless men would undoubtedly perish there, even if the inorganic occupants of Regis III left them alone. Thus the whole area would have to be searched, as the victims were bereft of any ability to act rationally, and were entirely dependent on the help of the Invincible.

They were comparatively certain only of the extent of the area where the search would have to be carried out, since the men could not have gotten more than twenty to thirty miles from the crater in their aimless wandering through the grottoes and gullies. Not much oxygen would be left in their packs, but the physicians reassured them that breathing the planet’s atmosphere would not constitute any serious danger. Considering the mental state of the men, it would, of course, not matter too much if the methane content in their blood resulted in a stuporous state.

The area they would cover in their search for the lost men was not too extensive, but extremely difficult to explore. It would take weeks, even under the best circumstances, to comb all the nooks and crannies, grottoes and caves. Beneath the layer of winding ravines and valleys existed another system of subterranean corridors and caverns, hollowed from the rock by underground rivers. The two upper and lower labyrinths were connected only at certain spots. The lost men might easily have wandered into one of these hiding places, and probably had separated from each other by now. Their total amnesia made them more helpless than small children — who would at least have stayed together. And worst of all, this terrain was the nesting place of the black cloud. Not much use could be made here of the Invincible’s gigantic technical facilities and scientific equipment. The most effective protection, the force field, could not be applied at all in the subterranean vaults of this planet. Horpach faced a most difficult choice: leaving the planet at once — which would have amounted to a death sentence for the lost men — or taking up the risky search. Their chances for success here were limited to the next few days, perhaps a week at most. Horpach realized that after that time there would be no hope of finding the men alive.

Early the next morning, Rohan called the scientists to a meeting, explained the situation and told them he was counting on their help. Rohan had brought back a handful of the “metal insects” in his pocket. Nearly twenty-four hours had been spent examining the little “flies.” Horpach wanted to know whether it would be possible to render them harmless. And the question arose again: why had Rohan and Jarg been spared by the attacking cloud?

The captives had a place of honor during these discussions: a closed glass container on the conference table. Only twenty specimens were left; the others had been destroyed during the scientific experiments. The strictly symmetrical tripartite structures resembled the letter Y. Three wings were anchored in a central thickening, each wing tapering to a point at its extremity. They looked coal black under direct illumination; but reflected light made them glisten bluish and olive green, not unlike the abdomens of certrain terrestrial insects which are composed of tiny surfaces like the multifaceted rose-cut of a diamond. Their interior structure was always the same when examined under a microscope. These miniscule elements, one-hundredth the size of a small grain of sand, formed a kind of autonomous nervous system with a number of independent fibers.

The smaller section, forming the arms of the letter Y, constituted a steering system controlling the “insect’s” locomotion. The micro-crystalline structure of the arms provided a type of universal accumulator and at the same time an energy transformer. Depending on the manner in which the micro-crystals were compressed, they either produced an electrical or magnetic field, or else produced changeable force fields that could raise the midsection’s temperature to a relatively high degree, thus causing the stored heat to flow in an outward direction. The resultant thrust of the air enabled the “insects” to ascend. The individual mini-crystals seemed to flutter rather than fly, and were incapable of steering an exact course — at least during the experiments conducted by the scientists in the laboratory. However, if they joined each other by chain-linking their wing tips, the ensuing aggregates possessed improved aerodynamic properties which increased proportionately with the number of links.

Each crystal combined with three other crystals. In addition, its arm could link up with another crystal’s middle section. This permitted a multilayered structure of ever-larger systems. The individual crystals did not even need to touch directly. It sufficed for the wingtips to come into close proximity to bring about a magnetic field which kept the entire system in balance. When a given quantity of “insects” clumped together, the aggregate then displayed definite, observable behavior patterns. If the aggregate was subjected to external stimuli, it could change its direction, form, shape and the frequency of its internal impulses. Following such a change, the field would reverse its polarity, and as a result, the crystals no longer attracted but repelled each other and then broke down into their individual components.

Besides this steering system, each black crystal contained another communicative system, or rather the fragment of what seemed to be a larger entity. This superordinate entity, which probably incorporated an enormous number of separate elements, was the real driving power regulating the actions of the cloud. At this point scientists were stumped. They knew nothing about the growth potential or the “mind” of these guiding systems. Kronotos assumed that the number of individual elements making up a larger entity was determined by the difficulty of the task they had to solve. This hypothesis sounded quite plausible, but neither the cyberneticists nor the information-theory experts knew of any comparable structure, that is any “brain” capable of proliferating at will, able to adjust its size to meet the extent of its goals.

Some of the structures Rohan had brought along were damaged. Others, however, displayed typical reactions. The individual crystal could flutter about, ascend, and hover, nearly motionless, in the air; descend, approach a source of a stimulus or avoid it. Moreover, it was completely harmless; even when its existence was threatened — the research scientists tried to destroy individual crystals by chemical means, force fields, heat and radiation — it sent out no energy whatsoever to defend itself. It let itself be squashed like the most miserable bug on Earth, with one difference: the crystalline insect’s carapace was far more difficult to crack. However, the moment the “insects” combined into a relatively small aggregate and were then exposed to the action of a magnetic field, they produced a nullifying counterfield of their own. When subjected to heat they tried to combat it by giving off infrared radiation. Further experiments were not possible, since only a handful of crystals were at the scientists’ disposal.

Speaking on behalf of the rest of his colleagues, Kronotos answered the astrogator’s question. The scientists requested time for additional examinations and requested larger quantities of crystals. To this end they suggested sending an expedition into the interior of the ravine in order to search for the lost men, and at the same time bring back, say, ten thousand pseudo-insects.

Horpach agreed to this plan. But he was of the opinion that no more human lives should be endangered. He ordered a vehicle sent to the ravine, that had not participated in any maneuvers thus far: a special automated vehicle weighing eighty tons, normally deployed only under conditions of heavy radioactive contamination, high pressures and excessive temperatures. The vehicle, generally known as the Cyclops, was fastened down at the girders of the loading hatch, at the very bottom of the space cruiser. As a rule such machines were never put in action on planets, and until now the Invincible had never had to make use of its own Cyclops. In the history of the entire space fleet, the situations which had called for such extreme measures could be counted on the fingers of one hand. As far as the astronauts were concerned, dispatching the Cyclops for a mission meant charging the devil himself with a task; no one had ever heard of a Cyclops’ defeat.

The vehicle was lifted out of the ship’s hold with the help of cranes. Then it was set down on the ramp where the technicians and programmers took charge of it. In addition to the usual system of Diracs for the production of the force field, the Cyclops was equipped with an antimatter projectile cannon, which enabled it to shoot off antiprotons simultaneously in any and all directions. An ejector directly built into the turret even made it possible for the Cyclops to rise several yards above the ground on the interference of the force fields. This rendered the machine independent of wheels and caterpillar tracks as well as the profile of the ground’s surface. The front section was equipped with an armored nozzle; a retractable inhaustor emerged from the opening. This telescopic hand could drill into soil, obtain core samples of minerals in its vicinity and perform necessary exploratory tasks. Although the Cyclops was outfitted with powerful radio and television transmitters, it was also capable of independent action thanks to the electronic brain that guided it. The technicians of engineer Petersen’s operational staff had fed the brain a prepared program, for the astrogator figured on losing contact with the Cyclops as soon as it entered the ravine.

This program scheduled as its first task the roundup of the lost men. The Cyclops was to surround the men and itself with a secondary force field, concentric to its primary energy dome. Then under the protection of the outer perimeter it was to open an access route to its own inner shielding wall of energy. Once men and machine were safely protected, the Cyclops was instructed to bring back as large a number of the attacking crystals as it could gather up. Only in case of extreme emergency, if the force field were in danger of being crushed, was the machine permitted to resort to its antimatter cannon. The resultant annihilation would inevitably lead to nuclear contamination of the surrounding area. This would endanger the lives of the missing men who might be lingering near the battle zone.

The Cyclops was about twenty-five feet in diameter. Should some cleft in the rocks prove to be too narrow to let it pass through freely, it could enlarge the opening by either using its steely telescopic hand or by crushing the obstacle with its force field and then sweeping aside the rubble. But even if the field were switched off, nothing could befall the Cyclops, for its ceramic vanadium-armored hull was as hard as a diamond.

A robot had been installed in the interior in order to take care of the men once they were rescued. Even beds had been set up. After all installations had been checked, the armored colossus slid down the ramp effortlessly and passed through the openings in the energy dome which had been marked by blue lights. The gigantic machine seemed to be carried along by some invisible power. Even when driving at great speed, not the slightest cloud of dust was stirred. Soon the men, assembled at the Invincible’s tail end, could no longer see the Cyclops.

Radio and television contact between the Cyclops and the command center functioned perfectly for nearly an hour. On the observation screens a tall obelisk, resembling a toppled-over church steeple, came into sight. It partially blocked Rohan’s view of the rock walls. Rohan recognized this as the entrance to the ravine where the attack had taken place. The Cyclops’ speed diminished somewhat while it rolled across the first talus which was covered with many large boulders. The men, watching the vehicle’s progress on the videoscreens in the command center, even heard the babbling brook which flowed hidden under the rocky debris — since the machine’s nuclear drive worked so quietly.

The communication experts managed to maintain audio-visual contact until 2:40 P.M. By that time the Cyclops had driven across the flat, easily navigable part of the ravine and had arrived at the labyrinth of the rusty jungle. Thanks to the efforts of the radio operators, they succeeded in sending and receiving four further messages. But the fifth message was already so garbled that they had to guess at its meaning: the machine’s electronic brain informed them that the vehicle was proceeding satisfactorily.

At that point Horpach acted according to plan and dispatched a flying probe equipped with a television relay system. The probe rose skyward at a steep angle and disappeared from view within a few seconds. Communication with the Invincible was maintained; the command center received the probe’s steady signals. The videoscreens projected the image of a picturesque landscape as seen from the altitude of 1700 feet; fissured rocks covered with rows of rusty red and black bushes. Several minutes later the observers spotted the Cyclops far below as it advanced steadily along the bottom of the gorge. The machine glistened like a fist of steel. Horpach, Rohan and the leaders of the specialists’ groups stood before the videoscreens in the command center. The reception was good, but they fully expected it to grow worse or even be disrupted. For this reason they had readied further probes to serve as relay stations. The chief engineer was firmly convinced that contact with the Cyclops would be interrupted in case of an attack; with the aid of probes, they would at least be able to observe the Cyclops’ operations.

The men before the videoscreen, watched the wide-screen image carried by the high-flying eye of the teleprobe; the colossus was now only a few hundred yards away from the transporters that blocked the way inside the rock-gate; the electronic eye of the Cyclops could not see this. On its way back, upon completion of its tasks, the Cyclops was supposed to tow away two collided tanks locked tightly together.

Seen from above, the two abandoned transporters looked like small greenish boxes. Near one of the vehicles the men could recognize a partially charred figure — the body of the man whom Rohan had hit with the Weyr gun.

Directly in front of a bend in the road where the pillars rose, forming the rock-gate, the colossus came to a halt. There it approached a slope, overgrown by a wild tangle of metal bushes that reached almost to the bottom of the valley. The men watched the machine’s movements intently. It opened the force field out the front in order to send the inhaustor through the gap. The inhaustor protruded from its casing, like an elongated cannon barrel with a grappling hand at its end. It grabbed a few bunches of the metallic growths and pulled them, apparently effortlessly, out of the rocky ground. Then the vehicle retreated a short stretch, turned and crept backwards into the ravine.

The entire operation had functioned smoothly. Radio contact with the Cyclops’ brain was reestablished with the help of the teleprobe hovering above the ravine. The colossus reported having stashed away inside a special container a generous specimen of teeming black “insects.”

Now the Cyclops had approached the scene of the disaster within one hundred yards. There stood Rohan’s second energo-robot, its armored back leaning against the rock; the two interlocked transporters were stuck in the middle of the rocky passage; a short stretch ahead was the first energo-robot that had formed the column’s front. The softly trembling air indicated that the robot was still producing a force field, just as it had earlier when Rohan had left it behind after the catastrophe had befallen his group of men. First the Cyclops switched off the Diracs of the energo-robot via remote control. Then the giant revved up its motor, rose into the air and skillfully floated over the backs of the transporters, which jutted at a 45° angle. Hovering over the narrow defile, the Cyclops descended to the huge boulders. Then — more than thirty-five miles away from the ravine — one of the observers in the control room of the Invincible shouted a warning, just as the black pelt covering the slopes began to smoke and fall over the terrestrial vehicle in big waves, burying it instantly and completely, as if a mantel of pitch-like smoke had been thrown over it. An instant later a widely branched bolt of lightning flashed across the whole width of the attacking cloud. The Cyclops had not deployed its devilish weapon — the lightning was simply caused by the energy fields produced by the cloud itself, which clashed with the machine’s own force barrier. Suddenly, this dome-shaped barrier, to which a heavy layer of heaving blackness seemed to be glued, appeared to come alive. Now it swelled up like a gigantic lava bubble; now it contracted. This strange game went on for quite a while. The observers were under the impression that the hidden vehicle was trying to divide the myriads of attackers, which became more and more numerous, as ever new cloudy avalanches rolled down into the gorge. The luminous glow of the protective sphere could no longer be seen by the observers. Only the weird battle between two powerful inorganic forces continued in the dull silence. Finally one of the men in front of the videoscreen sighed: the twitching black bubble had disappeared into a dark funnel. The cloud had changed into a giant whirlpool which extended beyond the highest rocky peaks. The cloud’s lower end clawed into its invisible opponent while its top rotated like a mile-long maelstrom in wild bluish whirls. No one said a word, but the men knew that the cloud was trying to squash the vehicle trapped inside the bubble like a kernel in a shell.

Rohan heard dimly as the astrogator questioned the chief engineer as to whether the Cyclops’ force field would hold out. But he said nothing; he could barely manage to open his mouth.

The black whirlpool, the walls of the ravine, the black, bushy growths — all vanished in the fraction of a second. It looked as if a fire-spewing volcano had opened up at the bottom of the glen; a fountain of smoke, boiling lava, chunks of rock and, finally, a huge cloud, which dragged behind it a trail of vapor veils. The cloud raced higher and higher, until the steam — from the boiling waters of the little brook, perhaps — reached an altitude of one mile where the teleprobe was flying. The Cyclops had deployed its antimatter cannon.

No one in the control center moved or uttered a sound. A sense of gloating satisfaction ran through the group. It did not really matter, nor did it lessen the intensity of their emotion, that this feeling had no rational foundation. Perhaps their pleasure stemmed from the subconscious impression that the cloud had finally met up with a worthy opponent. Ever since the start of the attack direct communication with the Cyclops had been cut off and the men could only see whatever was sent via the probe’s ultrashort wave rays across forty miles of vibrating atmosphere. Also the men working outside the control center had learned of the battle raging inside the ravine. That part of the crew which had been busy dismantling the aluminum barrack stopped working. The horizon over to the northeast grew bright as day, as if another sun were rising, far mightier than the first sun which now stood high in the sky. Then the brilliant glow was blotted out by a pillar of smoke, which soon spread out into a giant dark mushroom cloud.

The technicians in charge of watching over the probe had to remove it from the thick of the battle by making it ascend to a height of two and one-half miles. Thus it escaped the zone of violent airstreams caused by the constant explosions. Neither the rock walls, lining the sides of the ravine, nor the matted slopes, and not even the black cloud that had crept out of the brushy tangle were visible. Bubbling tongues of flame and wisps of smoke, criss-crossed by the parabolic trajectories of glowing debris, filled the videoscreens. The probe’s phonometer transmitted continuous rumbling thunder, sometimes weaker and sometimes stronger again, as if a considerable part of the continent were shaken by an earthquake.

It was astonishing that this ghastly battle just kept going. A few seconds more and the bottom of the ravine and the entire area around the Cyclops would reach the melting point. The rocks would sag, collapse and change into lava. Indeed, the observers were now able to see the fiery glistening stream make its way toward the exit of the gorge a few miles away.

Horpach wondered whether the electronic switches of the Cyclops’ antimatter cannon were stuck, for it seemed unlikely that the cloud would persist in attacking an adversary who dealt it such destructive blows. However, after the probe had been given instructions to climb still higher, and had reached the border of the troposphere, the image on the picture screen proved to Horpach that he was mistaken.

By now the visual field comprised some fifteen square miles. The entire jagged terrain was in motion. The men watched as black conglobulations oozed forth from the darkly spotted rocky slopes, emerging from fissures and caves haltingly, as if photographed in slow motion (of course this optical illusion was only caused by the distance). The black billowing masses rose upwards, fused and grew denser during their journey as they pushed ahead in the direction of the battle scene. For several minutes it looked as if the dark avalanches that were continually thrown into the battle zone from the rear might suppress the atomic fires, suffocating them by their sheer mass and extinguish the flames. Yet Horpach knew better; he was well aware of the energy reserves contained in the manmade monster.

An earsplitting, endless roll of thunder roared from the loudspeakers and filled the control center. At the same time flames two miles high bored into the shapeless mass of the attacking cloud. The burning pillars rotated slowly, forming a fiery mill. The air vibrated in layers, which bent in the heat as its core shifted.

Inexplicably, the Cyclops now drove backwards and retreated gradually toward the glen’s exit, without halting its attack for a single second. Perhaps the machine’s electronic brain had considered that the atomic explosions would cause the rock walls to burst and fall on it. Although the Cyclops could survive such a calamity, its maneuverability might be affected considerably. For whatever reason, the Cyclops tried to reach open terrain, and in this broiling turmoil the observers could no longer distinguish between the fire from its cannons, smoke, wisps of cloud or debris of the rocky pillars.

The gigantic cataclysm of nature seemed to have reached a climax. The next moment, however, something incredible happened. The image on the videoscreen flared up, brightened to a terribly glaring, blinding white. The screen was covered by a swarm of innumerable explosions. In a renewed influx of anti-matter every thing lying beneath the Cyclops was annihilated. The air, debris, steam, smoke and gasses were transformed into hardest radiation to split the ravine in two. Within a radius of three hundred yards the cloud was hurled skywards.

More than forty miles from the epicenter of the earth-shaking explosion, the Invincible reeled under the impact. Seismic waves traveled through the desert. The transporters and energo-robots standing under the ramp slid to the side. A few minutes later a violent howling storm swept down from the mountains. Its fiery breath seared the faces of the men who sought shelter behind the machines, whipped whirling sheets of sand high into the air and raced on across the wide desert.

Evidently, a fragment must have hit the teleprobe, which by that time was over eight miles from the scene of the catastrophe. Communication was not disrupted but the picture blurred considerably. Another minute passed by. As the wisps of smoke dissipated a little, Rohan, who had kept his eyes glued to the screen all this time, was able to witness the next stage of the fight.

The battle was not over yet, as he had thought a short while before. If the attackers had been living beings, the massacre would have induced the reinforcements coming up from the rear to turn around, or at least have forced them to stop in the face of this flaming hell. But this was a battle between inanimate things. The atomic holocaust continued; only form and direction of the main attack were altered. For the first time Rohan understood what the battles must have been like that had once raged on the desolate and deserted surface of Regis III, when the robots had destroyed each other. He sensed dimly what forms of selection had been used by this defunct evolutionary process, and what lay behind Lauda’s hypothesis that the pseudo-insects had been victorious because of their optimum adaptation. At the same time, it occurred to him that something similar must have occurred here before solar energy fixed the inorganic, indestructible memory banks in the mammoth cloud’s myriads of tiny crystals. These inanimate particles — mere nothings compared to the all-consuming flames, the rock-devouring explosions — had had to overcome similar stragglers thousands of years ago — heavily armored giants and atomic monsters, descending from the species of robots. Whatever had enabled the crystals to survive, whatever had allowed the metal hulls of those giant behemoths to be torn into rusty shreds and dragged through the immense desert together with the skeletons of once indestructible electro-mechanisms (which now lay buried in the sand) — whatever had wrought this utter havoc represented an unbelievable, indescribable bravado, if such a term could be applied to the tiny crystals of the gigantic cloud. But what other name could you give it? Rohan could not help an involuntary feeling of admiration as he continued to watch the cloud.

Even in the face of the massacre the cloud kept on attacking. Now only the highest mountain tops peeked out from the cloud bank which covered the entire area picked up by the telelenses of the probe. Everything else — the entire valley — disappeared beneath a flood of concentric black waves which raced up from the horizon and were sucked into the funnel of fire at whose center the Cyclops stood, though it could no longer be seen inside the conflagration. This advance had been gained at the cost of apparently senseless sacrifice; but at least it offered some chance of success.

Rohan and the men realized this as they helplessly watched the spectacle unrolling before their eyes on the videoscreens in the control center. The Cyclops’ energy reserves were practically inexhaustible. But the longer the annihilation bombardment lasted, the hotter it would get inside the machine. For at least a fraction of the star temperatures was imparted to the cannons and thus returned to its point of origin, despite the powerful protective installations, despite the antiray reflectors mounted on the Cyclops’ armored hull. That was why the attack was continued on all fronts simultaneously. The denser the concentration of antimatter particles clashing with the doomed hailstorm crystals on the armored plates, the higher the temperature rose in the Cyclops’ engines. A human being would have long succumbed to the conditions inside the Cyclops. The ceramic hull had probably turned a glowing red, but beneath the canopy of smoke, the observers could see nothing but the pulsating light blue bubble of fire as it crept slowly toward the exit of the ravine. Thus the spot where the cloud’s first onslaught had taken place appeared two miles to the north; they recognized the horribly burnt-over ground, covered with a crust of slag and lava. From the shattered rocks hung the ashes of the brush-like growth. Small clumps of metal clung to them — the remains of molten crystals struck by nuclear explosions.

Horpach gave orders to switch off the loudspeakers, whose ear-splitting noise filled the control center. He asked Jazon what might happen once the temperature inside the Cyclops exceeded the heat resistance of the electronic brain.

The scientiest answered without hesitating: “The cannons are shut off automatically.”

“And the force field as well?”

“No.”

Meanwhile the battle area had shifted to the plain outside the exit of the ravine. The inky ocean of flames boiled, welled up, began to whirl about, then rushed into the fiery gullet with devilish leaps.

“That should happen any minute now.” Kronotos spoke into the silence that emanated from the violently heaving picture. Another minute went by. Suddenly the glow of the fiery funnel grew considerably weaker. The cloud had covered it.

“Thirty-five miles from here,” said the communications technician in answer to a question from Horpach.

The Astrogator sounded the alarm. The crew manned their stations. The Invincible pulled up the ramp and the personnel elevator; all the hatches were closed. Once again a fiery glow could be seen on the videoscreens. The funnel of fire had returned. This time the cloud no longer attacked; only a few wisps were ignited and flared up brightly. The main body of the cloud receded in the direction of the ravines, penetrated into the labyrinth which was overlaid by dense shadows. The Cyclops, apparently undamaged, came back into view. It was still very slowly pushing backwards, keeping up its steady bombardment all the while, annihilating the entire surrounding terrain — rocks, sand, dunes.

“Why doesn’t the Cyclops shut off its cannons?” somebody called out.

As if in reply to these words, the machine stopped firing, turned and rolled toward the desert with increasing speed. Far overhead, the teleprobe pursued the machine’s course. Suddenly the men saw something like a thin band race toward the probe with incredible speed. Before they realized that the Cyclops had fired at the probe, and that the fiery streak was due to the annihilated air particles along the missile’s trajectory, the men recoiled instinctively, perhaps out of fear that the discharge might jump off the screen and detonate right in the command center. Then the image vanished and only the empty white screen stared at them.

“The Cyclops has smashed the probe, Astrogator!” shouted the technician at the steering console. Horpach gave orders to send up another teleprobe. Meanwhile the Cyclops had come so close to the Invincible that they could recognize the colossus as soon as the second probe had gained a little altitude. Another thread of light, and the second probe was destroyed. Just before the picture vanished from the screen, they barely managed to recognize their own spaceship. The Cyclops was no more than six miles away now.

“That damn thing has gone off its rocker!” swore the second technician at the steering console, and his voice trembled with agitation. On hearing these words, Rohan suddenly knew. He glanced at the commander and was aware that Horpach had been seized by the same thought. He felt a senseless, leaden heaviness creep through his limbs, his head, throughout his entire body. But the command had been issued: the astrogator had ordered a fourth and a fifth teleprobe sent up. They were all destroyed by the Cyclops, who picked them off like a sharpshooter at target practice.

“I need maximum thrust,” said Horpach without taking his eyes off the videoscreen.

The chief engineer’s fingers struck full chords on the distributor keyboard as if he were playing an organ.

“Full power for takeoff in six minutes,” he replied.

“I need maximum thrust,” Horpach repeated in the same tone of voice. Silence fell over the control center. One could even hear the hum of the relays behind the enamel walls. It sounded as though a swarm of bees had awakened there.

“The reactor shell is too cold,” the chief engineer argued.

But now Horpach turned around and, facing him directly, repeated for the third time in the same unchanged voice: “I need maximum thrust.”

Without a word the chief engineer grasped the main lever. Alarm signals bleated in staccato bursts throughout the spaceship, and followed the men’s steps like a distant roll of drums as they hurried to their battle stations. Once more Horpach glanced at the videoscreen. Nobody said a word, but everyone knew by now that the impossible was about to happen: the astrogator was preparing to go into battle with his own Cyclops.

The quivering needles of the instruments lined up like soldiers. On the lit-up face of the output meter the numbers jumped up to five and six figures. Sparks burst from somewhere in the supply network, and it began to smell of ozone. In the rear of the control center the technicians communicated to each other by hand signals which control system was to be switched on.

Shortly before it was destroyed, the next teleprobe showed the elongated head of the Cyclops, and the men watched as it tried to squeeze through the narrow gap between the rock walls. Then once again the screen was blank, blinding the eyes of the observers with its silvery white. Any moment now, the machine would become visible via direct transmission. The radar operator was ready to drive an outside TV camera beyond the nose of the spaceship in order to enlarge the view field. The communications technician shot off another probe. The Cyclops did not seem to be heading straight toward the waiting Invincible, positioned under the protective energy dome and ready for battle. Teleprobes sped from the spaceship’s nose at even intervals.

Rohan knew that the Invincible was capable of stopping a discharge of antimatter, but to intercept the energy of the thrust would cost them their energy reserves. Under the circumstances Rohan thought it wisest to turn back — in other words, to go into stationary orbit. Any minute now he expected to hear the command, but Horpach remained inexplicably silent, as if he believed it possible that the electronic brain might regain its senses. Indeed, while following the silent movements of the dark shape amongst the dunes with a worried expression, Horpach asked: “You keep calling the Cyclops, don’t you?”

“Yes. No contact.”

“Send: Stop immediately!”

The technicians at the console got busy. Two, three, four times, streaks of light flashed under their hands.

“No reply, Astrogator.”

Why doesn’t he start? Rohan was puzzled by the astrogator’s reluctance. Maybe he won’t admit defeat? What nonsense! Horpach! He made a move… and… now… he’s going to issue the order to take off…

But the astrogator simply took a step backward.

“Kronotos?”

The cyberneticist came closer. “Here.”

“Whatever have they done to that Cyclops?” Rohan felt consternation. Horpach had said “they” — as if he were actually dealing with thinking opponents.

“The autonomous circuits are running on cryotrons,” began Kronotos with a voice which revealed that he was merely voicing theories. “The temperature has gone up. The circuits have lost their supraconductivity…”

“Do you know this for sure or are you just guessing?” asked the astrogator.

What a strange conversation! Everybody stared at the videoscreen on which the Cyclops could now be seen in direct transmission. It was creeping forward, its movements fluid yet somewhat unsteady. Now and then it deviated from its course as if it were still in doubt about its real destination. It fired several times at the teleprobe before hitting its target. Then the men saw the probe plummet to the ground like a ball of fire.

“The only thing I can imagine that would explain its strange behavior would be resonance,” said the cyberneticist after a moment’s hesitation. “If their field has overlapped with the brain’s own — ”

“How about the force field?”

“A force field can’t screen out a magnetic field.”

“Too bad,” the astrogator remarked dryly.

Gradually the tension eased inside the Invincible’s control center. The Cyclops was obviously no longer steering for its homeport. The distance between them, that had been very slight, increased again. No longer subject to human control, the vehicle ambled off to the wide expanses of the northern desert.

“Chief engineer, take over for me for a while,” requested Horpach. “The rest of you will accompany me downstairs.”