The Lost Machine

DISCOURAGEMENT

At first she was bewildered and not a little fright­ened, though our first meeting must have shown that I intended no harm.

Gently I placed her on top of my case-work and, holding her there with my fore-rods, set off in the direction of her journey. She was hurt, blood was pouring down her right arm.

We made the best speed my eight legs could take us. I was afraid lest from lack of blood her mind might go blank and fail to direct me. At length it did. Her mental vibra­tions had been growing fainter and fainter until they ceased altogether. But she had been thinking ahead of us, picturing the way we should go, and I had read her mind.

At last, confronted by a closed door she had shown me, I pushed it down and held her out on my fore-rods to her father.

“Joan...?” he said, and for the moment seemed unsur­prised at me — the only third planet man who ever was. Not until he had dressed his daughter's wounds and roused her to con­scious­ness did he even look at me again.

There is little more. They have been kind, those two. They have tried to compre­hend, though they cannot. He once removed a piece of my casing — I allowed him to do so, for he was intelli­gent — but he did not under­stand. I could feel him men­tally trying to classify my struc­ture among elec­tric­ally operated devices — the highest form of power known to him, but still too primi­tive.

This whole world is too primi­tive. It does not even know the metal of which I am made. I am a freak... a curio­sity outside compre­hension.

These men long to know how I was built; I can read in their minds that they want to copy me. There is hope for them: some day, perhaps, they will have real machines of their own— But not through my help will they build them, nothing of me shall go to the making of them.

...I know what it is to be an intelli­gent machine in a world of madness...

The doctor looked up as he turned the last page.

“And so,” he said, “it dissolved itself with my acids.”

He walked slowly over to the window and gazed up to Mars, swimming serenely among a myriad stars.

“I wonder,” he murmured, “I wonder.”

He handed the type­written sheets back to his daughter.

“Joan, my dear, I think it would be wisest to burn them. We have no desire to be certified.”

Joan nodded.

“As you prefer, Father,” she agreed.

The papers curled, flared and black­ened on the coals – but Joan kept a copy.