Collected short fiction, p.511
Collected Short Fiction, page 511
“The thing that digs!” she whispered, “Coming!”
They sprinted, too late. That enormous slow machine, which Claypool had seen slicing the end of the mountain into geometric neatness, came lurching out of the new excavation, over a new embankment. The first sunlight flashed cold on huge bright blades and black-and-crimson armor.
It roared down to meet them.
XVI.
Thai mountain-eating saurian wasn’t creeping, now its overburdened gears made a deep, reptilian bellow. The spinning tracks clanked and clattered oil the steep rocky slope. The wide cutting blades slashed down wickedly, and cruel teeth glittered in its metal maw.
“Oh. Mr. White—Mr. Lucky!” the child was sobbing. “I can’t find the black thing that runs it. I don’t know how to stop it!”
And the machine came on.
Site stumbled, as they ran. Claypool took her up in his arms, whimpering faintly, and tried to sprint. But that lurching armored monster swerved to cut him off from the old building. He tried to double back, and the thundering bulk of, it veered again.
He feinted right, and darted left. For a moment, those vast whipping tracks failed to hold in the loose rubble of the new embankment.
Wallowing clumsily in thick yellow dust, the machine almost buried itself. Claypool stumbled around it, along the rim of the mountain. He had almost passed, when a round stone rolled.
He went to his knees, aid the machine climbed out of its pit. It wheeled and came after him, a grinding metal avalanche. He fled, with the sobbing urchin in his arms. Again he tried to pass, and the machine cut him off.
It herded him like a driven animal against the steep embankment. He tried to climb the slope and slid back again, floundering in broken rock. Dust choked him, and he toiled to breathe. Sharp stone blades slashed his naked feet. The shuddering child had become a hopeless burden in his arms.
“Please—Mr. White,” she kept sobbing, “I can’t stop it—”
He stumbled, and rose again. Dust caked the lacerations on his knees and feet with stiff red mud. His hot body quivered to a chill of exhaustion. But the pursuing machine was thundering close behind, and he staggered on again, blinded with stinging rivulets of dusty sweat.
“Stop!” the child shrieked suddenly. “Mr. Overstreet says stop!”
He blinked hard, to see, and terror halted him. For that lumbering machine had driven him into a corner, between the high embankment and the lip of the precipice. A dozen yards ahead was: the broken edge, from which the dark basaltic columns fell.
He tried to turn, and yielding soil caught his feet. He came down, full length. Twisting, he managed to keep the weight of his body off the child. But his breath was crushed out against a great dark boulder, and savage pain numbed him.
He couldn’t get up.
Gears moaned and howled. Crimson-and-black, the armored machine wallowed out of heavy yellow dust, thundering down. Bright enormous blades were lifted ready, and red sparks flashed from the grinding jaws. He tried to help the child get out of the way, but she relaxed in his arms.
“Oh, thank you!” she breathed. “Thank you, Mr. Lucky!”
And that metal saurian veered again. The great crashing tracks of it passed close, covering them with strangling dust. The roar of gears was deafening—and abruptly stilled. Presently the mountain trembled faintly, and Claypool heard a distance-muffled crash from the talus slope below the cliffs.
The little girl stood up, brushing tidily at the dust on her worn yellow dress.
“I just couldn’t stop it.” Her voice still was small and dry with terror. “ ’Cause there wasn’t any black thing in it, and it just ran itself. But Mr. Overstreet could see it, and Mr. White told Mr. Lucky what to do.”
Claypool came stiffly to his feet. His twisted ankle throbbed, and his breath was a painful rasping. Dawn saw the muddy red gashes on his knees and his naked feet, and her eyes went wide with a dark anxiety.
“Does it hurt—too much?”
“Not too much,” he gasped. “We can stop them, yet!”
She caught his trembling arm and tried to help him rise. At a weary, plodding run, they came back from the brink of the cliffs, to the door of the old military building. Dawn stopped there.
“Mr. White says I must wait here,” she said solemnly. “He says I must try to keep the black things away.”
“Five minutes!” Claypool told her. “That will be enough.”
He stumbled into dusty gloom, at a panting run. Ahead, he could hear an ominous cracking of tortured beams. The building was settling into the new excavation. At any instant, he thought, the weakened walls might collapse. But he didn’t need much time now, to smash Wing IV.
A shudder ran through the groaning structure, and a hail of falling plaster halted him. Glancing back down the dark corridor, he saw Dawn Hall standing in the bright rectangle of the doorway, small and straight, brave with the ribbon in her hair. She waved him urgently on. He caught his breath and flung up his arm to shield his head and plunged into the rain of dust and debris.
Guided by touch through the blinding dust, he came to his old office. Grateful for doors that a man could open, he burst into the cloakroom beyond. The dummy fuse box was still dosed, the rug still in place. Several pairs of dusty overalls and an old sweater still hung innocently on the hooks.
The floor shook to a muffled rumble, and he knew that another section of the walls must have caved into the excavation. But the ceiling held, and he could see no sign that the humanoids had found the hidden elevator. Frantically he uncovered the disguised controls, and punched the DOWN button.
Nothing happened.
He tried the lights, and found there was no power. He was trembling, now, to a new impact of alarm. He couldn’t understand the power failure. The humanoids, he knew, had scrapped the old power systems, because they ran everything on beamed rhodomagnetic energy. But Project Thunderbolt hadn’t depended on outside power.
He had equipped the secret installation with its own separate plant. The lower level of the vault, beneath the shop and the launching station, was packed with heavy banks of batteries, fed by twin motor generators and supplying the entire project through rotary converters.
He tried to put down his sick dismay. Dodge or one of the other technicians must have shut down the automatic plant before they left, he told himself hopefully, for fear the mechanicals might detect the vibration or exhaust gases from the motors. But the missiles would still be set and ready, he promised himself grimly, if he could reach the launching key.
Desperately he jiggled the button again. Still there was no response.
He dropped to Ids throbbing knees, threw back the rug, and tugged at a ring to lift the escape door. Blackness lay deep and quiet below. A breath of musty damp came up about him, and a reek of fuel oil, for the ventilators had stopped.
The building shivered again.
Trembling and toiling for his breath and uncertain of his strength, he dropped awkwardly through the floor. His bare feet groped painfully for the escape ladder, and found the rungs at last. He scrambled down frantically, into black silence.
That reek of spilled oil choked him. He clung desperately to the ladder while his stomach heaved convulsively, and then dropped down again. The sharp-edged rungs hurt his lacerated feet. They were slippery with grease from the cables, and once he slipped.
He hung on by his aching arms, and found the cruel rungs again. He imagined the hordes of black machines gathering about the frightened child on guard above. He caught his breath, and terror spurred him on.
His feet splashed into cold, greasy water, and he knew he had come to the bottom of the shaft. He stumbled in the dark, groping for the exit to the shop. Something in the water bruised his bare toes, and he sobbed with pain. But at last he found the door, and pushed it open.
The concrete threshold was level with his chest. He scrambled over it laboriously, and came panting to his feet in the narrow tunnel which led into the vault. The dark was absolute. He found a switch by touch, and snapped it hopefully. No light came.
But he knew the vault from the months and years that stern duty had imprisoned him here, and he padded confidently down the tunnel. His mind could see the shop, the benches and tools and racks, and the launching station beyond. He knew where to reach for the key.
But his foot came down into emptiness.
Claypool toppled into vacant space, where the steel floor of the shop had been, and fell ten feet into ice-cold water. His right leg doubled and snapped. Agony flickered in his brain, and then a dull, increasing pain seized his knee and thigh. He tried to get up, and fell on his face in the oily water. He knew that his leg was broken.
Worrying jaws of pain tortured his useless leg, and slow waves of dark agony surged against his consciousness. But keener still were the pangs of failure. He coughed and strangled in the foul water, until he could breathe again, and then began crawling laboriously about the pit, on his hands and one sore knee, dragging his leg and looking for the firing key.
His groping fingers found only bare concrete, and the sheared bolts which had held generators and converters to their foundations. Project Thunderbolt had been efficiently dismantled, and the missiles were gone.
He couldn’t understand it. He had seen no hint that the disguised elevator had been discovered, and there was no other entrance. With the power off that elevator certainly had not been used to remove the equipment, but where had it gone? His dull brain wrestled vainly with the problem, and gave it up.
The crawling search had hurt his leg, and he was faint and shuddering. He retched feebly and then lay still. He left his leg in the shallow water, vaguely grateful for its numbing cold. The throbbing agony gradually became remote and bearable.
Yet his failure rankled. He should have had Overstreet look for the missiles, but he wasn’t quite used to this paraphysical stuff. Old dog and new tricks. A merciful drowsiness crept up from the chilling water.
T clink!
That crash was like shattering glass. He started fearfully, and woke a new dull ache in his leg. Then he knew that it was only a falling waterdrop, and he lay listening sleepily for the next.
He was done. Project Thunderbolt was lost. He had failed Dawn Hall, and all the hopes of man. He tried to ease his throbbing knee, and lay shivering in the cold water, waiting for the next crystal crash. There was nothing else to do.
But a shaft of light struck suddenly into the pit. from the tunnel. It hurt his eyes. The water splashed, less loudly now. Blinking painfully, he watched slim machines jumping down into the pit. The gleams of blue and bronze were beautiful on their smooth Mack bodies, and their legs didn’t break They glided toward him, blindly benign.
“At your service, Dr. Claypool.” That silver tone was emotionless and kind. “Are you injured, sir?” But his broken leg didn’t matter now. For Project Thunderbolt was lost, and the hopes of man were dead. He nodded feebly toward the black emptiness on the concrete shelf above him, where the launching station had been.
“So you found it, eh?”
“We found you, sir,” whined the small machine. “We observed you entering the old building, and we came to serve you as quickly as possible. The collapse of the structure delayed us, and we had to clear the rubble before we could reach you.”
He tried to lift his head, staring in a sick astonishment.
“You must not attempt to move, sir. You might increase your injuries.”
He felt too ill to laugh at the irony of that.
“How did you find it?” There was no reason for secrecy left, and he nodded at the empty foundations, “This installation?”
“We discovered the elevator shaft when we removed the debris of the old building, sir.” Serene steel eyes stared out of the dark. “Can you speak without pain, sir?”
He nodded feebly. “Then will you tell us what equipment was once installed here?”
The enormity of that question stunned him.
For it convinced him that the humanoids knew nothing, even yet, of Project Thunderbolt. Then who had sabotaged the installation? Ironsmith? He shivered from something colder than the black water, and his stomach feebly heaved again to the oily fumes. But even Ironsmith, sanity assured him, could hardly have carried away a hundred tons of heavy equipment on that rusty bicycle.
“What was this installation, sir?” persisted the gentle-voiced machine. “And why was it removed?”
An impulse of lingering defiance spurred him to feeble invention. “This was our first neutrino lab,” he mumbled desperately. “We calibrated our first search tubes from the coefficient of decay in the rock above. Later, when the military guard was set up, we removed the equipment into, the building above, because of the water seepage. We left the pit for an emergency shelter.”
The dark, intent machine seemed satisfied with that, but his own weary brain couldn’t let the riddle go. He dismissed a fleeting notion that the equipment had been removed by some paraphysical agency. Even Dawn Hall, he imagined, would find it difficult to teleport sixty tons of storage batteries.
But somebody had those long, dreadful missiles now, and the launching equipment, and all the specifications he had left in that sealed safe. Somebody had stolen the power to detonate any planet, as easily as one savage can brain another with a wooden club.
Claypool retched weakly again, and suddenly he felt a kind of pity for the unknown thief. He was almost glad that those missiles were gone. Whatever happened now, he wouldn’t have to bear the burden of them any longer.
“—questions, sir.” That melodious whine seemed to come from far away. “It is necessary for us to find the child who came here with you. What is her name, sir? And where is she now?”
Claypool smiled. For now he knew that little Dawn Hall must have escaped from the collapsing building—perhaps to that dark place underground, with the sound of running water, where White and his other disciples were waiting. Tight-lipped, he muttered:
“I don’t know.”
“She is very dangerous,” the machine droned sweetly. “She is unhappy under the Prime Directive, and she possesses supermechanical capacities. We are planning a new method to control such cases, and we may soon be able to serve such individuals. At present, however, they are still dangerous, because even euphoride fails in some cases to suppress supermechanical abilities. Where did she go, Dr. Claypool?”
“I don’t know.” And a bitter wrath seized him. Feebly, he shook his bruised fist at the dark face above him. There was no further need for caution, now.
“And I hope you never find her!” he whispered savagely. “I hope she goes on to Wing IV and wrecks that cunning inhuman brain. I hope she stops every humanoid, and frees every man that you’re smothering with your lying Prime Directive!” The cold, oily water splashed again, and dark identical faces came up around the first. It was hard for him to see them plainly, but they were all high-cheeked and handsome, faintly astonished and serenely kind.
“Now I’ve told you!” he rasped faintly. “Go ahead—kill me!”
“Sir, you do not understand our service,” that gentle voice droned quickly. “It is true that you have demonstrated your own unhappiness, and now you must receive euphoride shots as fast as you can tolerate them. But our function is not to punish, but to serve. You have displayed no supermechanical powers, and you need not fear destruction.”
He lay silent, not even shivering any more. The feeble gust of his anger had passed, and the cold had numbed his pain, and now he just felt very tired. Project Thunderbolt was gone, and he didn’t have to worry any more.
XVII.
Water splashed again, and quick dark forms knelt around him. They touched him lightly, with warm deft hands. They slipped something under him. They moved his numb leg, very gently.
“You have been most unwise, sir,” whined a small machine. “You have fractured your right femur and patella, and also damaged the ligaments of your right knee. You have showed your urgent need of our care.”
“You weren’t so careful,” he muttered bleakly, “when you were chasing us with that excavating machine.”
“That child was with you then,” the bright voice sang. “It is necessary for us to use every possible means to restrain such dangerous individuals. For the greatest good of the greatest number, we must preserve the Prime Directive.”
They lifted him, then, on the stretcher. They carried him, swaying gently, back to the repaired elevator. For all their skill, however, a thin new pain throbbed in his swollen leg. Cold sweat broke over him, and his awareness dimmed.
He knew they were carrying him back to the villa on the mountain crown. Once a hot, musky reek filled his nostrils and made his stomach flutter. At first he thought it was Ruth’s perfume, and then he knew they were passing that sunken garden, where those queer, clumsy blooms flitted and kissed and squeaked and died.
He opened his eyes again, in a small white room. He lay on a cold table. Quick deft machines were stripping off the damp rags of his torn robe, and sponging away the blood and grime. A new sharp odor took his breath, and something burned his lacerated feet. He tensed, when something touched his throbbing knee, and stifled an outcry.
“Your alarm is needless, sir,” purred a mellow voice, “because your pain will soon be gone.”
Soft plastic fingers lifted up his arm. He felt a cold swab, and saw the glitter of a hypodermic needle. His dry lips moved to protest, but no sound came. A circle of black faces swam above him, sleekly gleaming and all alike. The machine with the needle murmured softly: “Here is your first shot of euphoride. It will help relax you, while we set your broken bones. AH your worries are ended, sir. You will be quite happy, now.”
He felt too weak to struggle, and he scarcely felt the needle. He lay still, in a vague submerged awareness. The throbbing of his leg receded into remote unimportance. Deft hands drew a mask over his face, and he inhaled a cool fragrance.
