Kate Wilhelm - The Killer Thing

Survival meant learning about warp. It returned to the computer and fed more questions into it, and it learned about warp. The ship had been in space for months, perhaps longer, long enough to warp. It fed the information back to the computer and fixed a course, and went into warp sector. It didn’t matter where it came out because it had nowhere to go. It warped again, and still again, learning about warp sectors.

The ship got dangerously radioactive; a human would have died almost immediately in it. The robot didn’t mind; it would not be hurt by radiation. It learned about the atomic drive. It decontaminated the ship as much as the ship could be decontaminated.

With the conclusion of each lesson, overheard on Venus, recorded faithfully, it learned more about the ship and how to operate and navigate it. There were gaps in its education, classes had been held beyond its range of hearing. It knew nothing about refuelling. It knew nothing about the shield that would envelop the ship, absorb energy, or deflect it away at right angles. It came across references to these and other matters about which it knew nothing, and found them incomprehensible, it could only deduce from premises programmed into it, and there were pieces of data that had not been given it.

It came across the translation computer and this was within its range of capabilities. It was a self-modifying communications network. It learned the intricate web of references and cross references, and transferred them to itself, and modified one whole circuit in order to translate data from spoken language to binary digital code. With the new understanding of language it again scanned its own chemical and electronic storage units, and everything that had been said within range of its audio receptors became clear to it. Still it had no primary order to carry out; it could initiate no action other than that which became necessary in order to continue to function. It passed within range of planetary systems and kept going.

Only after enough time had elapsed for its fuel to become nearly exhausted did it consider landing. Scanning taught it that a ship is helpless without fuel, that to be in space without fuel is to die. It could not permit its own destruction. It had to land on a planet. Its third set of waldoes with the flexible, digit-like endings touched the board of the computer lightly, dancing over the keys, feeding to it the information concerning spatial and temporal co-ordinates, and velocity, and it answered with a spatial location and took over the guidance of the ship in order to land it on the planet of Tensor. The landing would be made in three Earth weeks. The robot did not move again in the minutes, or days, or eternity that the landing took. For it there were no intervals between events, and the next event of which it was aware was that of landing.

On Tensor, in a cave half-way up a heavily wooded hill, the rebel band led by Trol Han esTol watched the descent with troubled faces.

“Why isn’t it firing at us?” one of them asked, a lightly bearded youth clad in leather shorts. His feet were bound in the same dark-stained leather which wound up his legs to his knees. He was bare above the waist, his chest heavy and already downy.

One of the older men shushed him, and they were all silent as they continued to watch. The ship landed fifteen miles from them, on the edge of a plain backed up by the deep woods. Minutes later the radio clicked and hummed and the radio engineer tuned it. The observer in the lower reaches of the wood was reporting.

“No one has emerged as yet,” the metallic voice said. “It maintained a radio silence throughout the descent. Landing normal.”

Trol motioned for the radio engineer to acknowledge and stalked away into the recesses of the cave where his council was waiting for his decision concerning the strange ship, and the planned attack on the WG outpost on the far side of the meadow, over a hundred miles to the west.

Trol was an immense man, thick-chested, heavily-muscled, as were most of his people, with shocks of crisp, curling hair tumbling about his face like golden corn husks. His body was covered with the golden hair, and he had a luxurious, flamboyant beard. From the forest of golden hair his eyes sparkled a deep blue. He too wore the brown leggings and shoes, and the shorts. When he entered the council room, deep in the cave, the other members stood to greet him with looks of inquiry.

“It has landed,” he said simply, motioning for them to be seated. There were fifty-seven men in the room. He took his place at the head of a table where six other men were already sitting down again. The other men crouched, or sat, on the floor. The room was very warm. It had started as a natural cave chamber, and then had been cut out more and more during the past two years since the rebels had chosen it for their headquarters. On the high ceiling, seventy feet above them, a fairy garden of crystals gleamed, snowy helectites curved gracefully, and at the far end of the room where the cave was still active, the beginnings of a drapery of rosy travertine showed as a scroll-like edging of no more than two inches, translucent so that the light coming through it was tinged with red-gold. The walls of the cavern had been carved away on two sides to enlarge the chamber, but the other two sides were covered with gypsum flower formations that picked up and reflected the flickering lights like prisms. The room was lighted with lamps burning a tallow-like organic substance. The flames were steady except for an occasional flicker, and they were white, with blue umbras.

“Our watchers will keep us informed about the ship,” Trol said, his voice quiet, but carrying to every corner of the room. “If, as we suspect, it is a crippled fleet ship, it may be that there are no live men within it, in which case we simply will take it. If there are men, we must capture them for interrogation. It seems very unlikely that there are men inside. If we were to be attacked, there would be ground transports, or aircraft. That is a deep space fleet ship. They wouldn’t use it for a ground attack.”

He paused, but there were no questions as yet. “Let the debate continue, then,” he said and sat down. He looked at the speaker who had been interrupted by the appearance of the fleet ship. Fedo elArm was debating the position that the rebels should wait for the appearance of the Outsiders, and enlist their aid in the struggle against the World Group armies. It was not a popular position, but perhaps a wise one. Trol’s face showed nothing as he watched and listened to the speaker, but he was hearing only a fraction of the words that were ringing out in the cavern, echoing against the rock walls with emotion and force. The decision would rest on him; everyone knew that. His decision would not be questioned once made. He glanced at the other six men at the long table, his personal advisers, each showing a face as impassive as his own, each beset by the same doubts.

He listened for a moment to Fedo. “…unless provoked. Of course, it isn’t easy, or comfortable, to see their soldiers strutting down our streets, taking our women, our material possessions, but the alternative is planet-wide slaughter…”

Trol turned his thoughts inward again. It had been slaughter in the beginning, when the World Group forces made their appearance and demanded landing space. The Tensor scientists had been delighted; the politicians wary. The politicians had been right in this instance. The demand for land was met; the WG people demanded taxes and trade privileges, and finally the deportation of teachers, scientists, leaders in every field, and the right to establish World Group schools. War flared, briefly, bloodily, and the peace that followed was not a real peace, but a lull during which the rebels had grouped themselves in the mountains, steeling themselves against the reports of reprisals.