Isaac Asimov - The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF

“Since, I’ve been a refugee. From planet to planet, year after year, I’ve had to keep moving, to stay ahead of them. On several different worlds, I have published my rhodomagnetic discoveries and tried to make men strong enough to withstand their advance. But rhodomagnetic science is dangerous. Men who have learned it need protection more than any others, under the Prime Directive. They have always come, too soon.”

The old man paused, and sighed again.

“They can spread very fast, with their new rhodomagnetic ships, and there is no limit to their hordes. Wing IV must be one single hive of them now, and they are trying to carry the Prime Directive to every human planet. There’s no escape, except to stop them.”

Underhill was staring at the toylike machines, the long bright needle and the dull leaden ball, dim in the dark on the kitchen table. Anxiously he whispered:

“But you hope to stop them, now — with that?”

“If we can finish it in time.”

“But how?” Underhill shook his head. “It’s so tiny.”

“But big enough,” Sledge insisted. “Because it’s something they don’t understand. They are perfectly efficient in the integration and application of everything they know, but they are not creative.”

He gestured at the gadgets on the table.

“This device doesn’t look impressive, but it is something new. It uses rhodomagnetic energy to build atoms, instead of to fission them. The more stable atoms, you know, are those near the middle of the periodic scale, and energy can be released by putting light atoms together, as well as by breaking up heavy ones.”

The deep voice had a sudden ring of power.

“This device is the key to the energy of the stars. For stars shine with the liberated energy of building atoms, of hydrogen converted into helium, chiefly, through the carbon cycle. This device will start the integration process as a chain reaction, through the catalytic effect of a tuned rhodomagnetic beam of the intensity and frequency required.

“The humanoids will not allow any man within three light-years of the Central, now — but they can’t suspect the possibility of this device. I can use it from here — to turn the hydrogen in the seas of Wing IV into helium, and most of the helium and the oxygen into heavier atoms, still. A hundred years from now, astronomers on this planet should observe the flash of a brief and sudden nova in that direction. But the humanoids ought to stop, the instant we release the beam.”

Underhill sat tense and frowning, in the night. The old man’s voice was sober and convincing, and that grim story had a solemn ring of truth. He could see the black and silent humanoids, flitting ceaselessly about the faintly glowing walls of that new mansion across the alley. He had quite forgotten his low opinion of Aurora’s tenants.

“And we’ll be killed, I suppose?” he asked huskily. “That chain reaction—”

Sledge shook his emaciated head.

“The integration process requires a certain very low intensity of radiation,” he explained. “In our atmosphere, here, the beam will be far too intense to start any reaction — we can even use the device here in the room, because the walls will be transparent to the beam.”

Underhill nodded, relieved. He was just a small businessman, upset because his business had been destroyed, unhappy because his freedom was slipping away. He hoped that Sledge could stop the humanoids, but he didn’t want to be a martyr.

“Good!” He caught a deep breath. “Now, what has to be done?”

Sledge gestured in the dark toward the table.

“The integrator itself is nearly complete,” he said. “A small fission generator, in that lead shield. Rhodomagnetic convertor, tuning coils, transmission mirrors, and focusing needle. What we lack is the director.”

“Director?”

“The sighting instrument,” Sledge explained. “Any sort of telescopic sight would be useless, you see — the planet must have moved a good bit in the last hundred years, and the beam must be extremely narrow to reach so far. We’ll have to use a rhodomagnetic scanning ray, with an electronic converter to make an image we can see. I have the cathode-ray tube, and drawings for the other parts.”

He climbed stiffly down from the high stool and snapped on the lights at last — cheap fluorescent fixtures which a man could light and extinguish for himself. He unrolled his drawings, and explained the work that Underhill could do. And Underhill agreed to come back early next morning.

“I can bring some tools from my workshop,” he added. “There’s a small lathe I used to turn parts for models, a portable drill, and a vise.”

“We need them,” the old man said. “But watch yourself. You don’t have my immunity, remember. And, if they ever suspect, mine is gone.”

Reluctantly, then, he left the shabby little rooms with the cracks in the yellowed plaster and the worn familiar carpets over the familiar floor. He shut the door behind him — a common, creaking wooden door, simple enough for a man to work. Trembling and afraid, he went back down the steps and across to the new shining door that he couldn’t open.

“At your service, Mr. Underhill.” Before he could lift his hand to knock, that bright smooth panel slid back silently. Inside, the little black mechanical stood waiting, blind and forever alert. “Your dinner is ready, sir.”

Something made him shudder. In its slender naked grace, he could see the power of all those teeming hordes, benevolent and yet appalling, perfect and invincible. The flimsy little weapon that Sledge called an integrator seemed suddenly a forlorn and foolish hope. A black depression settled upon him, but he didn’t dare to show it.

Underhill went circumspectly down the basement steps, next morning, to steal his own tools. He found the basement enlarged and changed. The new floor, warm and dark and elastic, made his feet as silent as a humanoid’s. The new walls shone softly. Neat luminous signs identified several new doors: LAUNDRY, STORAGE, GAME ROOM, WORKSHOP.

He paused uncertainly in front of the last. The new sliding panel glowed with a soft greenish light. It was locked. The lock had no keyhole, but only a little oval plate of some white metal, which doubtless covered a rhodomagnetic relay. He pushed at it, uselessly.

“At your service, Mr. Underhill.” He made a guilty start, and tried not to show the sudden trembling in his knees. He had made sure that one humanoid would be busy for half an hour, washing Aurora’s hair, and he hadn’t known there was another in the house. It must have come out of the door marked storage, for it stood there motionless beneath the sign, benevolently solicitous, beautiful and terrible. “What do you wish?”

“Er… nothing.” Its blind steel eyes were staring, and he felt that it must see his secret purpose. He groped desperately for logic. “Just looking around.” His jerky voice came hoarse and dry. “Some improvements you’ve made!” He nodded desperately at the door marked GAME ROOM “What’s in there?”

It didn’t even have to move to work the concealed relay. The bright panel slid silently open, as he started toward it. Dark walls, beyond, burst into soft luminescence. The room was bare.

“We are manufacturing recreational equipment,” it explained brightly. “We shall furnish the room as soon as possible.”

To end an awkward pause, Underhill muttered desperately, “Little Frank has a set of darts, and I think we had some old exercising clubs.”

“We have taken them away,” the humanoid informed him softly. “Such instruments are dangerous. We shall furnish safe equipment.”

Suicide, he remembered, was also forbidden.

“A set of wooden blocks, I suppose,” he said bitterly.