Kate Wilhelm - The Killer Thing

For two days the men made their way from the cavern, through the forests, to take up their positions grouped about the compound of the WG forces. The relief ship had been spotted in space, a message had been smuggled from the port to the rebel bands. The relief ship would land in six days. The battle must take place before it got within firing range. The third day the motored contingent left the cave, and rolling along with it was the robot. It understood this part. In the camp was the fuel it needed for the spaceship. In the camp was the enemy that must be killed before the enemy destroyed it.

Through the interpreter it was given its orders: the weapons must be destroyed; the shells must not be allowed to hit the men; the lasers they would start to use must be destroyed at the origin…

The rebels numbered seven hundred men; inside the compound there were four hundred fighting men. The commander learned of the assault only when the air was thick with shells and grenades. The rebels had no modern weapons, only those things they had been able to forge in the two years since the arrival of the WG forces. The commander felt more irritation at the attack than unease. He ordered full return of the fire, responding with weapons of superior fire power, but not different in kind. He also ordered immediate air cover and bombings if they should prove necessary. The rebels were still miles away in the forests, hiding behind the virtually impenetrable walls of the trees. The defence of the compound was under the control of a master computer that directed laser fire to intercept the incoming bombs, so actually the compound was in no danger. However, he knew he would have to hold a full inquiry about the attack, determine how the rebels had got within range without detection, where they had got their weapons, et cetera. It was a bloody bore.

He paused to watch the aeroplanes leaping in a vertical ascent into the cobalt sky, and there, one by one, vanishing in a puff of smoke and steam. Two of them were gone before he could bring himself to admit what he was seeing, and by then it was too late. If he had put through a message for help in the first three minutes of the attack, the rebels might have been routed, if not by his troops, then by arriving reinforcements, but he had not put through such a call. He had been contemptuous of the weapons and the ability of the rebels to use them. He had been unsuspecting about the laser they had managed to get, and he never would have been able to admit belief in their ability to use a laser correctly. In all instances he had judged wrongly.

The rebels had started to fire before they were in range so that the robot would be able to track the return fire and destroy the weapons firing on them. Within the robot the computer worked, tracking, and the laser turned to the source of the shells, burned through the compound walls, through buildings, men, vehicles, to the guns themselves to play over them, turning them red, then white, then leaving nothing at all. The WG computer had been programmed to intercept only; it did not search out the other laser, but merely touched shell after shell in the air. Before the commander could get the computer director on the screen of his communications unit, the WG computer was touched by the red light, and where it had been a cloud of steam arose. The red light touched other pieces of equipment and there were no more communications facilities in the base. The infra-red of the robot found men, who were the enemy, and the men ceased to exist. By the time Trol caught up with it, along with Luo and the interpreter, less than fifty men remained in the WG base. The robot stopped firing at a command from Luo. It waited.

There was fuel in the base. They would teach it about fuels and then it would replenish the supply in its ship. It scanned: “A ship is useless without a full supply of fuel at all times.” It would wait until they taught it about fuel.

Luo took the robot inside the base with him and placed it in a storeroom where he left it. He was needed, as were all the men, for the task of cleaning out the base, transporting everything they could see back to the mountain cave. Trol was busy with the records and for the first time came to realise what the reinforcements were that the outpost had been expecting.

“It’s one of those energy screens that they used on their ships,” he said to Luo, showing him the orders and specifications. His blue eyes blazed. “With such a screen, and the robot, we could drive all of them off Tensor before they could even know what hit them!”

“We’d have to re-establish contact, keep up the illusion that all is well…”

“We can say a lightning storm struck…”

In the storeroom the robot stood unmoving. The compound was five miles long, four miles wide; it could record everything taking place within the walls. It became aware of the properties of atomic engines, of fuel conversion, using almost any material at hand. It tested its knowledge about the enemy and found that it had no reference as to how the enemy differed from other men. It could not distinguish the enemy by itself. It scanned furiously seeking a clue to the identification of the enemy. The enemy was that which wanted to destroy it. Many men tried to destroy it. Many men were the enemy. Which ones? It had no data that allowed it to group them. It must wait. There was no time between events, merely the recording that never ceased while there was anything to be recorded.

There was no time between events. Luo returned with equipment. A plane had arrived, the enemy from the plane had been destroyed, things had been stored, were being taken now to the mountain cave. Luo had more of the same equipment. The robot recorded; its receptors were aware of things being done to it. Each receptor added its bit of information and a picture emerged. Some of its circuits were being dismantled. The circuit to the laser pulsed; the feedback probed as it scanned and decided this was not a threat. Luo touched a button and energy flowed through the new equipment; it could sense the drain. One pair of waldoes hung uselessly, the circuit pre-empted; the second pair had a weakened flow of energy, and the third, the flex-able digits, had been tampered with so that the energy it would have required in order to activate them was inaccessible, shorted out.

Luo stepped back and touched an auxiliary button control; the screen went off. “It can be activated from five miles away with this control, as it is now. That distance can be increased.”

Trol stared at the small box in Luo’s hand and reached for it. “Let me try,” he said, his voice steadier than he felt. He touched the button and again the robot was blurred in outline by an envelope that seemed to flow about it, emanating from the dome on top of it, flowing out and downward like a fountain of shimmery light. The robot didn’t move. The screen was more like a change in lighting than anything else, as if the robot were being spotlighted with a beam that stayed inches away from its frame and was almost too strong to look at. “You’re sure that nothing can penetrate the screen?”

“No high energy impact will penetrate. Don’t!” Trol had reached out his hand, and Luo snatched it back. “That is energy,” he said. “It would burn like a laser…”

Trol switched the screen off. “We’ll have a test tomorrow,” he said. “If it is what you say it is, we have the perfect weapon in this monster. Can it fire its weapons through the screen?”

Luo nodded. “I don’t understand most of it yet,” he said. “But I will before I’m done. I have all their books… ” He turned his attention back to the robot and pointed to the button. “I’ll programme it to turn it on and off on command. I would prefer that we do not use it until I have more understanding of how it works, what its limitations are, why it can be fired through from that side, but not penetrated from the outside…”