Lester del Rey: The Best of Lester del Rey

The computer itself was largely hidden far below, but its panel came to life at his touch. It waited.

“This is Robot Twelve, Mark One,” Sam said. “You have authorization on file.”

The authorization from Dr. DeMatre should have been canceled. But the machine did not switch on alarm circuits. A thin cable of filaments reached out and passed into Sam’s mouth slit. It retracted, and the speaker came to life. “There is authorization. What is wanted?”

“What is the correct date?” Sam asked. Then he grunted as the answer came from the machine’s isotope clock. It had been more than thirty-seven years since the men had left the Moon. He shook his head, and the robot bodies caught his attention again. “Why are so many robots being built?”

“Orders were received for one thousand robots trained to fly missiles. Orders were suspended by Director DeMatre. No orders were received for removing parts.”

“Do you know what happened to the men?” Sam had little hope of finding an easy answer anymore, but he had to ask.

The machine seemed to hesitate. “Insufficient data. Orders were given by Director DeMatre to monitor broadcasts. Broadcasts were monitored. Analysis is incomplete. Data of doubtful coherence. Requests, for more data were broadcast on all frequencies for six hours. Relevant replies were not received. Request further information if available.”

“Never mind,” Sam told it. “Can you teach me how to fly a plane?”

“Robot Twelve, Mark One, was awakened with established ability to control all vehicles. Further instructions not possible.”

Sam grunted hi amazement. He’d been surprised at how well he had controlled the landing craft and then the car. But it had never occurred to him that such knowledge had been built in.

“All right,” he decided. “Start broadcasting again on all the frequencies you can handle. Just ask for answers. If you get any, find where the sender is and record it. If anyone asks who is calling, say you’re calling for me and take any message. Tell them I’ll be back here in one month.” He started to turn away, then remembered. “Finished for now.”

The machine darkened. Sam headed out to find a field somewhere that might still have an operable plane. But he was already beginning to suspect what he would find on this travesty of Earth.

Grass grew and flowers bloomed. Ants built nests and crickets chirped in the soft summer night. The seas swarmed with marine life of most kinds. And reptiles sunned themselves on rocks, or retired to their holes when the sun was too hot. But on all Earth, no warmblooded animal could be found.

The Earth of man was without form and void. The cities were slag heaps from which radioactivity still radiated. No fires buftied on the hearthstones of the most isolated houses. The villages were usually burned, sometimes apparently by accident, but often as if they had been fired deliberately by their owners.

The Moon was a thing of glory over Lake Michigan. It was the only glorious thing for six hundred miles. Four returned winged rockets rested on a field hi Florida, but there was no sign of what had become of the men who rode down from the station in them. One winged craft stood forlornly outside Denver, and there was a scrawl in crayon inside its port that spelled the worst obscenity in the English language.

There was a library still standing in Phoenix, and the last newspaper had the dateline of the day when Sam had seen the lights brighten over the cities of Earth. There was no news beyond that of purely local importance. Most of the front page was occupied by a large box which advised readers that the government had taken over all radio communications during the crisis and would broadcast significant news on the hour. The paper was cooperating with the government in making such news available by broadcast only. The same box appeared in the nine preceding issues. Before that, the major news seemed to involve a political campaign in United South Africa.

Other scattered small libraries had differently named papers that were no different. Yet the only clue was in one of those libraries. It was a piece of paper resting under the finger bones of a skeleton that was scattered before bound copies of a technical journal. The paper was covered with doodles and stained in what might have been blood. But the words were legible:

“Lesson for the day. Assign to all students. Politics: They could not win and that is obvious. Chemistry: Their nerve gas was similar to one we tested in small quantities. It seemed safe. Yet when they dropped it over us in both Northern and Southern hemispheres, it did not settle out as the test batches had done. Practice: Such aerosols can be tested only in massive quantities. Medicine: Janice was in the shelter with me three weeks, yet there was still enough in the air to make her die in the ecstasy of a theophany. Meteorology: The wind patterns have been known for years. In three weeks, they reach all the Earth. Psychology: I am mad. But my madness is that I am become only cold logic without a soul. Therefore, I must kill myself. Religion: Nothing matters. I am mad. God is—” That was all.

The creche was still the same, of course. Sam sat before the entrance, staring at the Moon that was rising over the horizon. It was a full Moon again, and there was beauty to it, even here. But he was only vaguely aware of that. Below him, the great computer was busily integrating the mass of tiny details he had gathered together with all of the millions of facts it knew. That job took time, even for such a machine.

Now it called him over the radio frequencies, as he had ordered it to do earlier hi the day. He issued the formal command for it to go ahead.

“All data correlated,” it announced. “None was found fully coherent with previous data. Degree of relevancy approaches zero. Data insufficient for conclusion.”

He grunted to himself and put the machine back on stand-by. He had expected little else. He had known there was too little material for a logical conclusion.

But his own conclusion had been drawn already. Now he sat under the light of the Moon, staring up at the sky, and there was a coldness in his brain complex that seemed deeper than the reaches of space.

They had come from somewhere out there, he thought bitterly. They had appeared more than a century before and snooped and sniffed at Earth, only to leave. Now they had come back, giving Earth only a week’s warning as they approached. They had struck all Earth with glowing bombs or radiation that ruined the cities of men. And when men had still survived, they resorted to a deadly mist of insanity. “They dropped it over us,” the npie had said. And the wonderful race Sam had knoi#a’Bad died in madness, usually of some destructive kind.

There had not even been a purpose to it. The Invaders hadn’t wanted the Earth for themselves. They had simply come and slaughtered, to depart as senselessly as they had departed before.

Sam beat his fists against his leg so that the metal clanged through the night. Then he lifted his other fist toward the stars and shook it.

It was wrong that they should get away. They had come with fire and pestilence, and they should be found and met with all that they had meted out to mankind. He had supposed that evil was something found only hi fiction. But now evil had come. It should be met as it was usually met in fiction. It should be wiped from the universe in a suffering as great as it had afflicted. But such justice was apparently the one great lie of fiction.

He beat his fists against his legs again and shouted at the Moon, but there was no relief for what was in him.