The Killer Thing

Twelve

There was no time. There was only now, and all else was data to be scanned indiscriminately with no temporal reference, as before and after. There was no future to be considered, anticipated, or feared. There was no future. Only the ever present now. It was going no place, to do nothing. It had no directive other than to maintain itself. It had no need for food, for heat, for radiation shielding. It had discarded those things from the fleet ship that was still accelerating at maximum speed away from Venus and the Solar System. Behind it in space a trail of unnecessary items marked its path: seats, beds, clothing, pressure suits, food, everything that was not stored away within something else, everything that could be picked up and taken to the airlock to be released.

It scanned: “…survival itself might depend on your being able to dismantle any part of the ship and reassemble it.” A bit of data, picked up and recorded from a drill several miles away from the laboratory. Survival meant understanding the ship, being able to break it down and rebuild it. It began breaking it down, first the control board itself, studying the wiring, tracing circuits, deciphering coded information. It rebuilt the control board and moved on to the analogue computer. It learned to feed it questions, learned the range of its ability to answer. It moved on to the construction of the ship itself, the walls, floor, furnishings…

There was no time. There was endless time. There was time enough to work through the ship, inch by inch, and learn each part, break down each part and rebuild it. After this was done, it scanned again: “You have to be able to go into warp sector immediately with no warning. Nothing can touch you in warp. It could mean the difference between a hit and a miss.”

Survival meant learning about warp. It returned to the computer and fed more questions into it, and it learned about warp. The ship had been in space for months, perhaps longer, long enough to warp. It fed the information back to the computer and fixed a course, and went into warp sector. It didn’t matter where it came out because it had nowhere to go. It warped again, and still again, learning about warp sectors.

The ship got dangerously radioactive; a human would have died almost immediately in it. The robot didn’t mind; it would not be hurt by radiation. It learned about the atomic drive. It decontaminated the ship as much as the ship could be decontaminated.

With the conclusion of each lesson, overheard on Venus, recorded faithfully, it learned more about the ship and how to operate and navigate it. There were gaps in its education, classes had been held beyond its range of hearing. It knew nothing about refuelling. It knew nothing about the shield that would envelop the ship, absorb energy, or deflect it away at right angles. It came across references to these and other matters about which it knew nothing, and found them incomprehensible, it could only deduce from premises programmed into it, and there were pieces of data that had not been given it.

It came across the translation computer and this was within its range of capabilities. It was a self-modifying communications network. It learned the intricate web of references and cross references, and transferred them to itself, and modified one whole circuit in order to translate data from spoken language to binary digital code. With the new understanding of language it again scanned its own chemical and electronic storage units, and everything that had been said within range of its audio receptors became clear to it. Still it had no primary order to carry out; it could initiate no action other than that which became necessary in order to continue to function. It passed within range of planetary systems and kept going.

Only after enough time had elapsed for its fuel to become nearly exhausted did it consider landing. Scanning taught it that a ship is helpless without fuel, that to be in space without fuel is to die. It could not permit its own destruction. It had to land on a planet. Its third set of waldoes with the flexible, digit-like endings touched the board of the computer lightly, dancing over the keys, feeding to it the information concerning spatial and temporal co-ordinates, and velocity, and it answered with a spatial location and took over the guidance of the ship in order to land it on the planet of Tensor. The landing would be made in three Earth weeks. The robot did not move again in the minutes, or days, or eternity that the landing took. For it there were no intervals between events, and the next event of which it was aware was that of landing.

On Tensor, in a cave half-way up a heavily wooded hill, the rebel band led by Trol Han esTol watched the descent with troubled faces.

“Why isn’t it firing at us?” one of them asked, a lightly bearded youth clad in leather shorts. His feet were bound in the same dark-stained leather which wound up his legs to his knees. He was bare above the waist, his chest heavy and already downy.

One of the older men shushed him, and they were all silent as they continued to watch. The ship landed fifteen miles from them, on the edge of a plain backed up by the deep woods. Minutes later the radio clicked and hummed and the radio engineer tuned it. The observer in the lower reaches of the wood was reporting.

“No one has emerged as yet,” the metallic voice said. “It maintained a radio silence throughout the descent. Landing normal.”

Trol motioned for the radio engineer to acknowledge and stalked away into the recesses of the cave where his council was waiting for his decision concerning the strange ship, and the planned attack on the WG outpost on the far side of the meadow, over a hundred miles to the west.

Trol was an immense man, thick-chested, heavily-muscled, as were most of his people, with shocks of crisp, curling hair tumbling about his face like golden corn husks. His body was covered with the golden hair, and he had a luxurious, flamboyant beard. From the forest of golden hair his eyes sparkled a deep blue. He too wore the brown leggings and shoes, and the shorts. When he entered the council room, deep in the cave, the other members stood to greet him with looks of inquiry.

“It has landed,” he said simply, motioning for them to be seated. There were fifty-seven men in the room. He took his place at the head of a table where six other men were already sitting down again. The other men crouched, or sat, on the floor. The room was very warm. It had started as a natural cave chamber, and then had been cut out more and more during the past two years since the rebels had chosen it for their headquarters. On the high ceiling, seventy feet above them, a fairy garden of crystals gleamed, snowy helectites curved gracefully, and at the far end of the room where the cave was still active, the beginnings of a drapery of rosy travertine showed as a scroll-like edging of no more than two inches, translucent so that the light coming through it was tinged with red-gold. The walls of the cavern had been carved away on two sides to enlarge the chamber, but the other two sides were covered with gypsum flower formations that picked up and reflected the flickering lights like prisms. The room was lighted with lamps burning a tallow-like organic substance. The flames were steady except for an occasional flicker, and they were white, with blue umbras.

“Our watchers will keep us informed about the ship,” Trol said, his voice quiet, but carrying to every corner of the room. “If, as we suspect, it is a crippled fleet ship, it may be that there are no live men within it, in which case we simply will take it. If there are men, we must capture them for interrogation. It seems very unlikely that there are men inside. If we were to be attacked, there would be ground transports, or aircraft. That is a deep space fleet ship. They wouldn’t use it for a ground attack.”

He paused, but there were no questions as yet. “Let the debate continue, then,” he said and sat down. He looked at the speaker who had been interrupted by the appearance of the fleet ship. Fedo elArm was debating the position that the rebels should wait for the appearance of the Outsiders, and enlist their aid in the struggle against the World Group armies. It was not a popular position, but perhaps a wise one. Trol’s face showed nothing as he watched and listened to the speaker, but he was hearing only a fraction of the words that were ringing out in the cavern, echoing against the rock walls with emotion and force. The decision would rest on him; everyone knew that. His decision would not be questioned once made. He glanced at the other six men at the long table, his personal advisers, each showing a face as impassive as his own, each beset by the same doubts.

He listened for a moment to Fedo. “…unless provoked. Of course, it isn’t easy, or comfortable, to see their soldiers strutting down our streets, taking our women, our material possessions, but the alternative is planet-wide slaughter…”

Trol turned his thoughts inward again. It had been slaughter in the beginning, when the World Group forces made their appearance and demanded landing space. The Tensor scientists had been delighted; the politicians wary. The politicians had been right in this instance. The demand for land was met; the WG people demanded taxes and trade privileges, and finally the deportation of teachers, scientists, leaders in every field, and the right to establish World Group schools. War flared, briefly, bloodily, and the peace that followed was not a real peace, but a lull during which the rebels had grouped themselves in the mountains, steeling themselves against the reports of reprisals.

Elt al Trin rose to speak then. “I remind you, gentlemen, of the parable of the ashtris and the lantric. The lantric in his wanderings came into the valley where the ashtris had lived peacefully since time immemorial. The lantric blundered into their nests, killing great numbers of them, and the ashtris held a meeting. What should we do? they cried. Look at how big the lantric is. We cannot hope to subdue an enemy so powerful. Let us move away until he tires of this valley and leaves it again. Even as they spoke thus, the lantric stepped on the nursery and destroyed thousands of their young, and then on the passageways that led to the communal dwellings, so that many thousands more were trapped and doomed to die from suffocation. One of the ashtris rose then and shouted, Let us all together meet this lantric. We number millions to his one. That is all that we have to fight with, our vast numbers. So they gathered, and in the dawn they swarmed over the lantric, blinding him with their bodies, piercing his tough skin with their pincers, chewing their way into his heart, and by the dusk the lantric lay dead among them.”

Elt al Trin paused and held up a transparent container in which there were three ashtris, no larger than fleas. There was a murmur throughout the chamber. He replaced the container on the table before him. “I say to you, gentlemen, we have nothing to fight with but our numbers. Today we are forty thousand fighting men, our enemy has ten thousand stationed on Tensor. Tomorrow he will have hundreds of thousands, and then it will be time to sit waiting for the intercession of the mythical Outsiders.” There was scattered clicking of the audience’s tongues against their teeth, and he held up his hand for quiet. “We don’t even know that the Outsiders exist! What evidence have we that there are such people? A rumour from a dying man, a prisoner from Mellic who lived in a ship’s storeroom and was burned by radiation for three weeks. Who can say how much of his tale was born of sickness? How firmly entrenched will the World Group powers be before this mythical race appears from nowhere in order to aid a people, of whom it has never even heard? Might we not better go back to the anthropological gods of our fathers and ask for their intercession? Might not the one be as helpful to us in our great need as the other?”

Fedo waited until there was again silence in the chamber before he made his final rebuttal. “My friends, what are numbers against the rain? Can numbers alone turn back the fires, the gases, the bombs? Can numbers withstand the deadly beams that dissolve and turn to air the targets they seek? We know about the camps where the soldiers live, the areas they have cleared about them; we know about the beams they can use to destroy anything that moves within those cleared areas, the gas clouds that bring death with even greater speed. How can we overcome them if we cannot even approach them? Those who go into our cities and towns? Yes, we can murder them, a handful, enough to draw the wrath of the main body, that is all. Then what? I can tell you: destruction. Complete and utter destruction.”

“We don’t know that they won’t visit that kind of complete destruction on us at any time as matters now stand!”

“But we do know that they haven’t done so yet.”

“They are waiting for their reinforcements! We intercepted their message to that effect. One month. That’s how much time we have! One month!”

Trol raised his hand for the debate to be ended. Each side had had its three hours; all had been said that could alter the situation, tilt it towards either position. Now it would rest with him and his council, but mainly with him. He inclined his head towards the council room, and the other members arose heavily and started to leave the large chamber. Trol was handed a message which he read. He raised his hand for attention.

“A metal robot has emerged from the ship that landed,” he said. “The ship is radioactive and cannot be approached. The robot is less radioactive. It has made no overture of any sort towards the observers, although they are positive that they are well within its range. They await instructions.”

“I’ll go immediately,” Luo umDis cried, jumping to his feet. “And Das, and Lewi…”

Trol nodded. “I command you, Luo, to take charge of the matter, to report back to me by radio of your findings. Take as many of the scientists as you deem necessary. Be wary of a possible trick…”

Luo bowed, his sharp blue eyes blazing with excitement and hope. A robot… If he could programme it to serve them… If it were more than the simple mobile tool that he knew the World Group possessed…

A group of twelve men travelled fast through the thick forests as silently as the animals that watched their progress. The people of Tensor had learned to live with their stretches of forests, not sacrificing them when technology began rising to ascendancy. The forests were still honoured and loved for themselves; the people still preferred them to the cities they dwelled in and the rare crime against nature itself was as severely punished as the still rarer crime against man. The patrols met the group as it neared the area where the robot was standing.

“It left the ship and since then has not moved,” the patrol scout said, motioning Luo to advance quietly. They stayed behind trees and looked out at the robot gleaming red and gold as it reflected the lengthening rays of the setting sun.

“Have you tried to contact it at all?”

The scout shook his head, his gaze intent on the robot.

It waited motionlessly. It had the need of fuel, and had not been taught how to obtain it. No one was threatening it. It waited. If no one had approached it at that point it would have waited until time and change wore away its covering, eroded its metals and crystals and diluted its chemicals until they were inert traces only. It recorded the voices that whispered away to its left, but it didn’t turn its dome to gather other sensory data concerning them. The words it was recording were meaningless. It scanned, then activated the circuit that was programmed for translating.

“Don’t guess we have much that could hurt it down here. We could call for demo charges.”

“No! Whatever you do you must not damage it until we have a chance to examine it.”

At the sentry’s voice a second circuit had been activated, the circuit that led to defensive measures. A slit appeared in the dome and infra-red sensors sought out the men speaking, caught them and fastened on them. The circuit that would activate the laser pulsed steadily, but did not close the connection that meant fire. The feedback mechanism said that no attack was forthcoming after all. It waited, watchful and ready to defend itself.

“We’ll have to get it back to headquarters. We can’t leave it out here. It might be seen and destroyed by the WG planes…”

It scanned. It had no fuel for flight, and didn’t know how to refuel. It could wait for an attack and meet it when it came, or it could allow itself to be moved out of the range of danger. It had experience with each of the alternatives; it had waited patiently, it had fled, it had attacked: each had led to satisfaction. The occasions it had allowed itself to be moved, it had learned more about itself, how better to function. It would be moved again. It rolled slowly towards the man, its wheels digging in slightly on the soft ground. It stopped and lowered treads, and its progress was faster. Luo watched it approach with awe, and a touch of fear.