The Lost Machine

THE CRASH

Sadly, that night I gazed up at the red, fourth planet.

There rolled a world which I could under­stand, but here, all around me, was chaos, incre­dible, un­reason­ing mad­ness.

With me, in the machine, sat three friends of Tom's whom he had picked up at the last town, and Tom him­self who was steering the contrap­tion. I shut my plate off from their thoughts and consid­ered the day I had spent.

Once he was assured that we were free from pursuit, Tom had said to himself:

“Well, I guess that deserves a drink.”

Then he stopped on a part of the hard strip which was bordered by a row of arti­fi­cial caves.

Conti­nually, as the day wore on, he led me past gaping crowds into places where every man held a glass of coloured liquid. Strange liquids they were, although men do not value water on the third planet. And each time he proudly showed me to his friends in these places, he came to believe more firmly that he had created me.

Towards sunset some­thing seemed to go seriously wrong with his machi­nery. He leaned heavily upon me for support and his voice became as uncer­tain as his thoughts were jumbled.

“Anybody comin' my way?” he had in­quired at last and at that invi­ta­tion the other three men had joined us.

The machine seemed to have become as queer as the men. In the morn­ing it had held a straight line, but now it swayed from side to side, some­times as though it would leave the track. Each time it just avoided the edge, all four men would break off their conti­nuous wailing sounds to laugh sense­lessly and loudly.

It was while I struggled to find some mean­ing in all this mad­ness that the disaster occurred.

Another machine appeared ahead. Its lights showed its approach and ours must have been as plain. Then an astounding thing happened. Instead of avoid­ing one another as would two intelligent machines, the two lum­ber­ing masses charged blindly together. Truly this was an insane world.

There came a rending smash. Our machine toppled over on its side. The other left the hard strip, struck one of the growths at the side of the road and burst into naked flames.

None of the four men seemed more than a little dazed. As one of them scrambled free, he pointed to the blaze.

“Thash good bonfire,” he said. “Jolly good bonfire. Wonder if anybody'sh inshide?”

They all reeled over to examine the wreck while I, forgotten, waited for the next imbe­ci­lity to occur on this night­mare world.

“It'sh a girl,” said Tom's voice.

One of the others nodded solemnly.

“I think you're right,” he agreed with diffi­cult dig­nity.

After an inter­val, there came the girl's voice.

“But what shall I do? I'm miles from home.”

“ 'S'all righ',” said Tom. “Quite all righ'. You come along with me. Nishe fellow I am.”

I could read the intention behind his words – so could the girl.

There was the sound of a scuffle.

“No, you don't, my beauty. No runnin' away. Dangeroush for li'l girlsh – 'lone in the dark.”

She started to scream, but a hand quickly stifled the sound.

I caught the up­surge of terror in her mind and at that moment I knew her.

The girl whose machine I had mended — who had been grate­ful.

In a flash I was among them. Three of the men started back in alarm, but not Tom. He was con­tempt­uous of me because I had obeyed him. He lifted a heavy boot to send it crash­ing at my lens. Human move­ment is slow: before his leg had com­pleted the back swing, I had caught it and whirled him away. The rest started futilely to close in on me.

I picked the girl up in my fore-rods and raced away into the dark­ness out of their sight.