Kate Wilhelm - The Killer Thing

He went back inside and bathed. He ate and then polished up the dinghy. He even washed the all weather suit. He had the relief ship on the radar screen and he sat watching its approach with satisfaction. Twice he went back to the cliff and looked down at the robot, measuring its progress. As he watched, the pile of loose rocks and sand shifted, rocks tumbling and rolling away from the hill. It was frantic, he knew, just as he had been frantic waiting for its arrival. He said softly, “I am sorry, brother. You fought a good fight all the way…”

For the first time, there was no overtone of fear and hatred in his voice when he addressed it. It had always done exactly what it had been designed to do, no more, certainly no less than that. The radio beep recalled him to the dinghy.

“Captain Tracy, this is General MacClure speaking. Congratulations, Trace. You’ve done a magnificent job down there. You’ll be rewarded handsomely… you can be sure of that. You name it, boy, whatever you want… We have aboard an army scientist, Trace. Colonel Langtree. Answer his questions, Captain Tracy.”

“Yes, sir,” Trace said, bewildered. He had heard once that Langtree had been one of the scientists who let the robot get away from Venus. He waited. Presently the thinner, more petulant voice of the scientist was in his ears.

“Captain, you say the robot is not destroyed? Is that right?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct.”

“To what extent is it damaged?”

For the next half-hour Trace answered the scientist’s questions, describing in detail the pursuit over the mountains, the activities of the robot since its entrapment, the abilities he had been able to observe while it was still free. There was silence for five minutes after the“ questioning and then MacClure was back.

“Trace, you are going to be picked up and brought aboard. We will give rendezvous co-ordinates immediately after this communication. Now, tell me this: is the robot within radio range?”

“Yes, sir. The dinghy is within a hundred and fifty feet of it.”

“Good. Turn your receiver on loud, so that it can hear. We want it, Trace. The Outsiders won’t negotiate worth a damn. The one ultimatum was it, with no area for negotiations. They insist that we withdraw back to the Solar System to be kept there in quarantine until we meet their requirements to qualify us as legitimate space travellers. It will be death to the World Group. We can’t fight them now, but if we have that robot, learn how it has developed that screen and adapt it to our ships… build more robots with that shield… We’ll take the entire galaxy, Trace, Outsiders and all. They don’t have anything that can compare to that invisibility shield. We need the robot. You’re going to be the biggest hero since Prometheus, Trace.”

What MacClure had said was true. Trace would be the biggest hero in the galaxy; it was in MacClure’s voice when he spoke to him, a note of deference already. The note would echo, would boom. This then was what the forty days had been for. Trace laughed in exultation and turned up the radio so that the robot could hear. He went outside to watch it, to hear with it the words coming from the ship. A three-foot segment of the cliff edge had been vaporised in a precise semicircular pattern. Trace stayed away from that area. Langtree’s voice sounded loud and close.

“You, Dr. Vianti’s robot, this is Colonel Langtree speaking to you. I know you can hear me and understand my words. I have a message for you. You understand about destruction and death. You understand about preserving your own life. You are trapped and doomed to destruction now. You know that we can drop bombs on you from miles above you, out of reach of your laser. You have seen these bombs; you learned about them back on Venus. Scan your memory banks and you will know that I did not want your destruction under the seas of Venus. That was a mistake. We want you alive and functioning. We want to learn from you, and we want to provide you with more abilities. We can do this. You know we can give you more abilities, better abilities. You must cooperate with us or we will destroy you.”

Trace’s eyes followed the trail of the laser, no longer sweeping back and forth in a straight line, but wobbling, making a figure of eight that was growing wider, burning into a larger area of the cliff as he watched. It would be free in an hour or so. As soon as it was able to burn a round hole, it would start enlarging it until it was free. The voice was continuing over the radio.

“If you understand my words you know that what I have said is true: you have been programmed to preserve yourself. Now you must follow my orders or you will allow yourself to be destroyed. You must turn off the laser.”

The beam vanished.

Trace hadn’t believed it could happen, hadn’t believed the robot capable of understanding to this degree. Suddenly the fear that had left him returned heavier than before. He backed from the edge of the cliff and went inside the dinghy. MacClure was speaking to him, ordering him to adjust the radio so that the robot couldn’t hear them. Trace made his report of the robot’s response to Langtree’s offer and he heard the triumphant note in MacClure’s voice. Trace was given co-ordinates for pickup, and the radio became silent. He stared at it.

They didn’t know what they were doing.

He remembered the other dinghy, equipped with the screen, and he started his engine. He had to go to the rendezvous point. He would go there and wait. He didn’t want to wait with the killer robot. His fever was high; he had ignored it in the excitement of the arrival of the relief ship. The ship was going into orbit now, he noted. They would dispatch the pickup craft within minutes. In half an hour it would be on the planet; he would get in, and they would take care of him. A long rest, vacation, they would get Lar for him, bring her to him wherever he said. He could retire now, a rich man, with everything a man could want for the rest of his life.

… a disease spreading through the galaxy…

Like a virus that could not be seen, that was deadly and swift, they would move through the galaxy, world by world falling before them, under the fire of their robots, both metal and flesh… He took off, swinging north, and landed near the other dinghy. He turned off his radiation detector, but the voices remained with him, louder, insistent, each clamouring for attention. He couldn’t turn them off. He tried to ignore them as he worked inside the other dinghy. Then he turned again to his own dinghy and left the spot. The rescue craft was on the radar screen, but he didn’t look at it. The radio was buzzing angrily at him, someone wanting to know what he had done, where he had gone and why.

For the first time since he was twelve, he ignored the voice of a superior officer, didn’t even hear the voice over the other voices that were louder, more insistent.

He thought of Venus, his birthplace, swamps and soft forests, steam and mud, and he knew he loved it. He thought of Mars, hard, cold air, domed cities, a vast frigid desert. He thought of Earth, overflowing with life, polluting its seas, lakes, rivers, forests, careless and indifferent because there were so many more worlds out there. Something Lar once said, and he hadn’t understood: “Drink first yourself of the cup you would offer a stranger.” Indifferent, happy-go-lucky Earthman, not responsible for the cup proffered the stranger; let him now drink of it himself.

Behind him a fountain of rubble erupted as the igniter he had rigged touched off the fuel that he had turned into a bomb. The other dinghy was gone. Trace was well schooled in the art of demolition. He didn’t turn back to check the damage; he knew that it would be complete destruction, that no part would remain in sufficient quantity to be reassembled for study.