The Invincible (19 page)

Rohan heard dimly as the astrogator questioned the chief engineer as to whether the Cyclops’ force field would hold out. But he said nothing; he could barely manage to open his mouth.

The black whirlpool, the walls of the ravine, the black, bushy growths—all vanished in the fraction of a second. It looked as if a fire-spewing volcano had opened up at the bottom of the glen; a fountain of smoke, boiling lava, chunks of rock and, finally, a huge cloud, which dragged behind it a trail of vapor veils. The cloud raced higher and higher, until the steam—from the boiling waters of the little brook, perhaps—reached an altitude of one mile where the teleprobe was flying. The Cyclops had deployed its antimatter cannon.

No one in the control center moved or uttered a sound. A sense of gloating satisfaction ran through the group. It did not really matter, nor did it lessen the intensity of their emotion, that this feeling had no rational foundation. Perhaps their pleasure stemmed from the subconscious impression that the cloud had finally met up with a worthy opponent. Ever since the start of the attack direct communication with the Cyclops had been cut off and the men could only see whatever was sent via the probe’s ultrashort wave rays across forty miles of vibrating atmosphere. Also the men working outside the control center had learned of the battle raging inside the ravine. That part of the crew which had been busy dismantling the aluminum barrack stopped working. The horizon over to the northeast grew bright as day, as if another sun were rising, far mightier than the first sun which now stood high in the sky. Then the brilliant glow was blotted out by a pillar of smoke, which soon spread out into a giant dark mushroom cloud.

The technicians in charge of watching over the probe had to remove it from the thick of the battle by making it ascend to a height of two and one-half miles. Thus it escaped the zone of violent airstreams caused by the constant explosions. Neither the rock walls, lining the sides of the ravine, nor the matted slopes, and not even the black cloud that had crept out of the brushy tangle were visible. Bubbling tongues of flame and wisps of smoke, criss-crossed by the parabolic trajectories of glowing debris, filled the videoscreens. The probe’s phonometer transmitted continuous rumbling thunder, sometimes weaker and sometimes stronger again, as if a considerable part of the continent were shaken by an earthquake.

It was astonishing that this ghastly battle just kept going. A few seconds more and the bottom of the ravine and the entire area around the Cyclops would reach the melting point. The rocks would sag, collapse and change into lava. Indeed, the observers were now able to see the fiery glistening stream make its way toward the exit of the gorge a few miles away.

Horpach wondered whether the electronic switches of the Cyclops’ antimatter cannon were stuck, for it seemed unlikely that the cloud would persist in attacking an adversary who dealt it such destructive blows. However, after the probe had been given instructions to climb still higher, and had reached the border of the troposphere, the image on the picture screen proved to Horpach that he was mistaken.

By now the visual field comprised some fifteen square miles. The entire jagged terrain was in motion. The men watched as black conglobulations oozed forth from the darkly spotted rocky slopes, emerging from fissures and caves haltingly, as if photographed in slow motion (of course this optical illusion was only caused by the distance). The black billowing masses rose upwards, fused and grew denser during their journey as they pushed ahead in the direction of the battle scene. For several minutes it looked as if the dark avalanches that were continually thrown into the battle zone from the rear might suppress the atomic fires, suffocating them by their sheer mass and extinguish the flames. Yet Horpach knew better; he was well aware of the energy reserves contained in the manmade monster.

An earsplitting, endless roll of thunder roared from the loudspeakers and filled the control center. At the same time flames two miles high bored into the shapeless mass of the attacking cloud. The burning pillars rotated slowly, forming a fiery mill. The air vibrated in layers, which bent in the heat as its core shifted.

Inexplicably, the Cyclops now drove backwards and retreated gradually toward the glen’s exit, without halting its attack for a single second. Perhaps the machine’s electronic brain had considered that the atomic explosions would cause the rock walls to burst and fall on it. Although the Cyclops could survive such a calamity, its maneuverability might be affected considerably. For whatever reason, the Cyclops tried to reach open terrain, and in this broiling turmoil the observers could no longer distinguish between the fire from its cannons, smoke, wisps of cloud or debris of the rocky pillars.

The gigantic cataclysm of nature seemed to have reached a climax. The next moment, however, something incredible happened, The image on the videoscreen flared up, brightened to a terribly glaring, blinding white. The screen was covered by a swarm of innumerable explosions. In a renewed influx of antimatter everything lying beneath the Cyclops was annihilated. The air, debris, steam, smoke and gasses were transformed into hardest radiation to split the ravine in two. Within a radius of three hundred yards the cloud was hurled skywards.

More than forty miles from the epicenter of the earthshaking explosion, the
Invincible
reeled under the impact. Seismic waves traveled through the desert. The transporters and energo-robots standing under the ramp slid to the side. A few minutes later a violent howling storm swept down from the mountains. Its fiery breath seared the faces of the men who sought shelter behind the machines, whipped whirling sheets of sand high into the air and raced on across the wide desert.

Evidently, a fragment must have hit the teleprobe, which by that time was over eight miles from the scene of the catastrophe. Communication was not disrupted but the picture blurred considerably. Another minute passed by. As the wisps of smoke dissipated a little, Rohan, who had kept his eyes glued to the screen all this time, was able to witness the next stage of the fight.

The battle was not over yet, as he had thought a short while before. If the attackers had been living beings, the massacre would have induced the reinforcements coming up from the rear to turn around, or at least have forced them to stop in the face of this flaming hell. But this was a battle between inanimate things. The atomic holocaust continued; only form and direction of the main attack were altered. For the first time Rohan understood what the battles must have been like that had once raged on the desolate and deserted surface of Regis III, when the robots had destroyed each other. He sensed dimly what forms of selection had been used by this defunct evolutionary process, and what lay behind Lauda’s hypothesis that the pseudo-insects had been victorious because of their optimum adaptation. At the same time, it occurred to him that something similar must have occurred here before solar energy fixed the inorganic, indestructible memory banks in the mammoth cloud’s myriads of tiny crystals. These inanimate particles—mere nothings compared to the all-consuming flames, the rock-devouring explosions—had had to overcome similar stragglers thousands of years ago—heavily armored giants and atomic monsters, descending from the species of robots. Whatever had enabled the crystals to survive, whatever had allowed the metal hulls of those giant behemoths to be torn into rusty shreds and dragged through the immense desert together with the skeletons of once indestructible electro-mechanisms (which now lay buried in the sand)—whatever had wrought this utter havoc represented an unbelievable, indescribable bravado, if such a term could be applied to the tiny crystals of the gigantic cloud. But what other name could you give it? Rohan could not help an involuntary feeling of admiration as he continued to watch the cloud.

Even in the face of the massacre the cloud kept on attacking. Now only the highest mountain tops peeked out from the cloud bank which covered the entire area picked up by the telelenses of the probe. Everything else—the entire valley—disappeared beneath a flood of concentric black waves which raced up from the horizon and were sucked into the funnel of fire at whose center the Cyclops stood, though it could no longer be seen inside the conflagration. This advance had been gained at the cost of apparently senseless sacrifice; but at least it offered some chance of success.

Rohan and the men realized this as they helplessly watched the spectacle unrolling before their eyes on the videoscreens in the control center. The Cyclops’ energy reserves were practically inexhaustible. But the longer the annihilation bombardment lasted, the hotter it would get inside the machine. For at least a fraction of the star temperatures was imparted to the cannons and thus returned to its point of origin, despite the powerful protective installations, despite the antiray reflectors mounted on the Cyclops’ armored hull. That was why the attack was continued on all fronts simultaneously. The denser the concentration of antimatter particles clashing with the doomed hailstorm crystals on the armored plates, the higher the temperature rose in the Cyclops’ engines. A human being would have long succumbed to the conditions inside the Cyclops. The ceramic hull had probably turned a glowing red, but beneath the canopy of smoke, the observers could see nothing but the pulsating light blue bubble of fire as it crept slowly toward the exit of the ravine. Thus the spot where the cloud’s first onslaught had taken place appeared two miles to the north; they recognized the horribly burnt-over ground, covered with a crust of slag and lava. From the shattered rocks hung the ashes of the brush-like growth. Small clumps of metal clung to them—the remains of molten crystals struck by nuclear explosions.

Horpach gave orders to switch off the loudspeakers, whose ear-splitting noise filled the control center. He asked Jazon what might happen once the temperature inside the Cyclops exceeded the heat resistance of the electronic brain.

The scientist answered without hesitating: “The cannons are shut off automatically.”

“And the force field as well?”

“No.”

Meanwhile the battle area had shifted to the plain outside the exit of the ravine. The inky ocean of flames boiled, welled up, began to whirl about, then rushed into the fiery gullet with devilish leaps.

“That should happen any minute now.” Kronotos spoke into the silence that emanated from the violently heaving picture. Another minute went by. Suddenly the glow of the fiery funnel grew considerably weaker. The cloud had covered it.

“Thirty-five miles from here,” said the communications technician in answer to a question from Horpach.

The Astrogator sounded the alarm. The crew manned their stations. The
Invincible
pulled up the ramp and the personnel elevator; all the hatches were closed. Once again a fiery glow could be seen on the videoscreens. The funnel of fire had returned. This time the cloud no longer attacked; only a few wisps were ignited and flared up brightly. The main body of the cloud receded in the direction of the ravines, penetrated into the labyrinth which was overlaid by dense shadows. The Cyclops, apparently undamaged, came back into view. It was still very slowly pushing backwards, keeping up its steady bombardment all the while, annihilating the entire surrounding terrain—rocks, sand, dunes.

“Why doesn’t the Cyclops shut off its cannons?” somebody called out.

As if in reply to these words, the machine stopped firing, turned and rolled toward the desert with increasing speed. Far overhead, the teleprobe pursued the machine’s course. Suddenly the men saw something like a thin band race toward the probe with incredible speed. Before they realized that the Cyclops had fired at the probe, and that the fiery streak was due to the annihilated air particles along the missile’s trajectory, the men recoiled instinctively, perhaps out of fear that the discharge might jump off the screen and detonate right in the command center. Then the image vanished and only the empty white screen stared at them.

“The Cyclops has smashed the probe, Astrogator!” shouted the technician at the steering console. Horpach gave orders to send up another teleprobe. Meanwhile the Cyclops had come so close to the
Invincible
that they could recognize the colossus as soon as the second probe had gained a little altitude. Another thread of light, and the second probe was destroyed. Just before the picture vanished from the screen, they barely managed to recognize their own spaceship. The Cyclops was no more than six miles away now.

“That damn thing has gone off its rocker!” swore the second technician at the steering console, and his voice trembled with agitation. On hearing these words, Rohan suddenly knew. He glanced at the commander and was aware that Horpach had been seized by the same thought. He felt a senseless, leaden heaviness creep through his limbs, his head, throughout his entire body. But the command had been issued: the astrogator had ordered a fourth and a fifth teleprobe sent up. They were all destroyed by the Cyclops, who picked them off like a sharpshooter at target practice.

“I need maximum thrust,” said Horpach without taking his eyes off the videoscreen.

The chief engineer’s fingers struck full chords on the distributor keyboard as if he were playing an organ.

“Full power for takeoff in six minutes,” he replied.

“I need maximum thrust,” Horpach repeated in the same tone of voice. Silence fell over the control center. One could even hear the hum of the relays behind the enamel walls. It sounded as though a swarm of bees had awakened there.

“The reactor shell is too cold,” the chief engineer argued.

But now Horpach turned around and, facing him directly, repeated for the third time in the same unchanged voice: “I need maximum thrust.”

Without a word the chief engineer grasped the main lever. Alarm signals bleated in staccato bursts throughout the spaceship, and followed the men’s steps like a distant roll of drums as they hurried to their battle stations. Once more Horpach glanced at the videoscreen. Nobody said a word, but everyone knew by now that the impossible was about to happen: the astrogator was preparing to go into battle with his own Cyclops.