Authors: Space Pioneers
"Keston, sir.
You know you told me to watch for the alien ship when it came
down?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Can't
track it, I'm afraid, sir. It went into radar shadow behind the rim of the
world well out of sight of both Deeley's survey ships and all we've got here as
well. That means it could have put down anywhere within a million square
miles."
"O.K.,
Keston. Secretive, aren't they? But keep your 'scopes out, and if you see
anything go upstairs larger than a firework, track it. If you must, send a
lifeboat after it. But don't miss seeing it go down!"
"Right, sir," Keston answered. The
lapel speaker went dead, and Chang turned to Carmody. "Go ahead," he
invited.
"Well, sir, there's only one more point
of interest and that's this." He laid his pointer on a blue cross about
ninety miles southwest of the ship at the center of the map.
"Fischer!" he said briefly over his shoulder, "get that
stereocube from Mitsubishi, will you? If it isn't fixed yet, use a quick dryer
on it. We can, make another print later."
"Right, Mr. Carmody," said a photo
tech fourth class who was standing nearby.
Carmody
turned to Chang again. He said, "This is the nearest approach we've found
to a sign of habitation, sir. It could be an ordinary hill, but it's also the
only thing that could by any stretch of the imagination be a camouflaged
building. Ah, here we are."
The photo tech fourth class came up to them
with a big stereo-cube and handed it over. He said, "Mitsubishi did have
to use a quick dryer on it, Mr. Carmody, and it'll fade in about ten
minutes."
"Good enough," said Carmody, taking
it. "Have him make another and fix it." He turned and put the
stereocube on the table, and Chang and Engelhart leaned over to examine it.
They
saw a reproduction of a steep-sided hill, vaguely square in plan, crowned with
a small clump of trees similar to those that dotted the plain around
them—luxurious green growths with soft barkless trunks. Carmody said, "You
see, sir, it could be a natural formation, but on a world as old as this there
aren't many hills as steep as that and certainly they don't stick up out of a
flat plain that way."
Chang
glanced from the cube to the site of the blue cross on the map and saw that it
was indeed sticking up like a wart on smooth skin. He said in a curiously
distant voice, "Very interesting, Carmody. Get me a spotlight and a
microscope, will you?"
An observant tech standing nearby anticipated
Carmody's order and passed the captain one of the pocket-sized twin microscopes
used for examining photos that wouldn't take enlargement. At the same time
Carmody pulled one of the ceiling lights down and held it over the top of the
cube. Chang scrutinized the hill closely.
At
last he straightened with a satisfied grunt and held out the microscope to
Engelhart. "Take a look at that clump of trees," he suggested.
"Tell me what you see there."
Engelhart adjusted the focus of the viewer
and bent to examine the cube. A few seconds later he uttered a surprised exclamation
and Chang smiled. "What does it look like?" he asked.
"Sir,
if that isn't a radar antenna I'll eat my entire uniform," Engelhart said.
He looked at it from a different angle, nodded in excitement. "That's an
antenna all right. And there's an incoming beam aerial in the crown of the big
tree on the left, and I think there's a transmitter next to it. Sir, what
induced them to hide the stuff like that?
For our
benefit?"
"Maybe they just didn't want to spoil
the view," said Chang shortly. He pinched his lapel speaker with his thumb
and first fingernails, said, "KestonI"
"Sir?"
"You
can call off the search for the focus of that radio beam southwest of here. You'll
find it on top of a hill"—he glanced at the map and made a rapid
calculation—"about ninety miles from here. You can't miss it—it sticks out
like a sore thumb. But don't try to meddle with itl
One
thing more. Tell those helis, if they see any of the robots on the way home, to
open their receivers, let down their screens and record anything they pick up.
Don't ask why now."
"Right, sir," said Keston, plainly
puzzled, and the speaker went dead. Chang turned to Engelhart.
"That's obviously where the alien ship
was delivering its beam. Nice shooting at that range." He pushed the
stereocube across to Carmody.
"Have
the first properly fixed print sent up to the bridge as soon as it's ready,
will you? We'll have to do something about attempting communication, I suppose,
but the prospect doesn't thrill me. Engelhart, come back to the bridge with
me."
They
re-ascended in silence, Chang wearing a thoroughly worried look, and were
greeted enthusiastically by Keston. He shut off his speaker and turned to them.
"Sir,
we've established a relationship between the robots and that hill with the
radio station atop it."
"Already?" said Chang.
"How?"
"One of the helis on
its way back ran across a robot lying down in the grass, so it made like you
said and went down without screens and its radio receiver wide. Better still,
another heli came back within a few miles of the hill in question, detoured
over it and picked up an incoming beam. They've just re-broadcast it to us,
and it's identical with one sent out by the robot. It's double, as usual—one
pictorial, one this odd mathematical stuff again. The semantic analyzers gave
it up in disgust, apparently, but Running Bull, one of my men, thinks he's got
a clue to it. Seems we were right about it being like a digital computer, but
it's a cut above the best we have. All our stuff depends on binary figure
combinations—you
know, one impulse or no impulse
.
This stuff uses impulses of varying strengths and conveys as much in one signal
as we do in ten. Anyway, Running Bull reckons that as soon as he can convert
the impulses into our sort of stuff, he can give the analyzers something they
can handle. Sir, what gives, though, about the natives? Have they just dug
themselves a hole and climbed in? Or have they merely taken fright at our
arrival and hidden till they know if we're friendly?"
Chang
shook his head. "I don't know. But we've only been on-world six hours, and
if I'm any judge six hours is a short time to hide
everybody."
"You mean they're insane? Or do they
live underground naturally, from choice?"
"That can be answered later," said
Chang. He strode over to his own control desk, snapped a switch, spoke into the
hanging mike. "Malory? I'm going off watch now. Have Keston post you on
the position as it stands. General orders are to sit still and do nothing, but
to be ready to go upstairs at short notice. And don't jump to
any
conclusions."
Two
days—the planet's twenty-nine-hour, four-minute days —passed. The big ship sat
in the middle of the black patch of charred "grass," already turning
green again, and its weapons still swung watchfully from side to side, the
radar antennae still probed the sky. The survey of the neighborhood had been
extended over a further sixty miles, making the map too big for the table in
the officers' mess. It had accordingly been transferred to the floor of the
recreation room, since the chart room, where one might have supposed it
belonged, was full of three-dimensional star maps. But nothing had happened.
Once,
the sky had clouded over and it had rained, and it was after that that fresh
green shoots sprouted among the wet ash near the ship. Otherwise everything had
been serenely peaceful. Neither animals nor robots had been seen within twenty
miles of the ship since the first day. It was as if by tacit consent they were
being ignored.
T don't understand it," Engelhart
confessed. Since there was nothing they could do just now, the officers on
watch were on the captain's verandah looking out over the plain. "What do
these people hope to gain by remaining hidden? Do they think we'll get bored
and go away again? Surely this is the openest invitation to bring the family
and set up house."
"Not
quite," Chang contradicted. "Those robots are a disturbing factor. I
had hoped for some clue to their behavior and their
raison
d'etre
from
Running Bull's idea, but since Keston reported that it appeared to be an
arbitrary number-code related to a spoken language, and the analyzers aren't
equipped to take straight number and can't take it if it isn't converted, I've
given up hope in that direction."
Keston nodded. He had joined them from
inship. He said, "But there's one inaccuracy there, sir. For all we know
the language might not have been spoken at all. It might be related to a
language of signs, for instance, or visual signals of some sort like colors.
Running Bull's working on that now. If only we had a semantic analyzer that was
more than a kindergarten toy! But that's all we'll have as long as they skimp
our allocations to pay for new fun-planets."
Chang nodded emphatically. He said, reaching
in his pocket for his pipe and hot-coil lighter, "We're supposed to be the
most important branch of the service, and if we find a habitable planet we get
a sizable fortune and retirement with honor. But they assuredly don't make the
job easy for us. If they'd stop spending so much on entertainment for twenty
years or so, I guarantee we could wipe off the overcrowding problem."
From
inship came voices, and after a moment Adhem came out on the verandah. He
nodded to Chang, said bluntly, "Sir, the men are getting edgy."
Chang said, "I feel that way myself.
This waiting for an enemy who doesn't seem likely to turn up would get anybody.
All right.
What do you prescribe?"
"Let 'em out in the sun, sir. There's no
town for them to go into, or any attraction, much, but I think I've spotted a
few cases of incipient agoraphobia, and the chance to get out in the air will
nip them in the bud. Tell them to keep within sight of the ship, if you
like."
"I
can do better than that," said Chang.
"Engelhart!"
"Sir?" from Engelhart.
"How
many alarm connections can you muster?"
"About a
dozen, sir."
"Right.
Detail a working party to mount them on posts and ring the ship with
them about four or five hundred yards out so that anything crossing either way
will make a racket. As soon as they're set up, you can let the off-watch men go
outside."
About an hour later they sat in an irregular
semicircle of cushioned chairs on the captain's verandah, and watched the men
leave the ship and savor the taste of natural air and the sight of blue sky and
the warmth of the sun. A few of the more energetic made up a couple of baseball
teams near the stem, but the majority went over to a grassy bank beyond the
burnt patch, stripped off their clothes and lay down to sun themselves a while.
Engelhart said, "Are you expecting any
trouble at all from the inhabitants, sir, or do you think they're willing to
stay hid?"
Chang
knocked out his pipe delicately and dropped his bombshell. He said, "I
think we've met the intelligent race."
Engelhart's
mouth dropped open. He said, "I don't understand, sir."
"Nor I," said Keston. "Do you
mean—they're invisible to us, or something?"
"I do not," said Chang calmly. T
think
the answer is staring us in the face."
They
thought it over. Then Deeley said faintly, "Sir, do you mean—the
robots?"
The captain
nodded,
his face strained and serious. He said, T
do
mean the
robots."
Adhem
sat up in his chair with a jerk. He said, "No, by thunder, sir. It's
impossible. I'll stake my reputation that these were never natural growths.
It's against all possibility for an Earth-type planet to evolve metal
intelligences."
Another
bombshell.
"Who
said they had
evolved?"
"Frankenstein!"
said Deeley in an awed voice.
"What was that,
Deeley?"
T
said Frankenstein, sir. It's the name of a preatomic story current on Earth,
dating back to the late Dark Ages, about a man who built the first robot and it
killed its creator."