Kate Wilhelm - The Killer Thing

Dr. Vianti looked at him quickly, a flash of curiosity and confusion crossing his face. “Those are the robots your government ordered built to do the mining,” he said.

“Our Government?” Trace watched the death-like face, but no further emotion showed.

“Of course. I was working on the model when your forces… liberated Ramses. The robot was ordered into production in order to speed up the mining operations. At that time we had fewer than fifty thousand miners in the field.”

They left the swaying car on a wide, evenly cut rock ledge and there, at close range, Trace saw the robots. They were cylindrical, on wheels, with cutting lasers and waldoes. “Tell us about them,” he said, keeping his gaze on the robots that continued to work.

“They are simple machines, programmed to cut blocks, lift them, lead them on to the cars, and cut more blocks. The lasers have a beam length of four feet, the depth they cut through.”

“And you made them?” Trace asked, turning to study the tiny man once more. Dr. Vianti nodded.

“I was improving the model when your… forces landed here.”

One of the robots lifted a four-foot-square block of the rock. It was shiny with green olivine, with bands of grey-white platinum running through it. The robot swung around and put the rock on a waiting car, and with a continuation of the same movement, turned back to the mountain, its laser flashing on in the same instant that the robot was in a position to use it.

“They’ve done all this, the whole mountain? With no humans to run them?”

“I am here,” Dr. Vianti said. “And, of course, there are the security forces, and my secretary…”

“Yeah,” Trace said, looking up and then down. There were thousands of the robots at work, each one working steadily. As he watched, one of them rolled over a slab of rock that had been dropped in its path, and the sudden change tilted the machine; it hung for a second, its centre of gravity too off balance for the spinning wheels to find purchase again, and then it toppled, rolled, and fell over the side of the mountain. This occurred without sound, without interrupting the work of any of the other robots. Immediately another robot appeared at the far end of the ledge and rolled to the empty position to resume the task.

“I’m afraid that I’ll have to get back,” Dr. Vianti said. “Where there is an accident like that, it sometimes throws off the whole line. Things do have to be co-ordinated in this operation.”

Silently the three men returned to the low, grey-green building. The doctor turned on a screen that showed in a series of dots the cutting-line as it marched into the mountain itself. There was an almost imperceptible jag in it, and he twisted dials and made corrections, staying at the board until the line of dots was again straight.

“I adjusted the replacement in order to speed it up until they were working in unison once more,” he said. He remained in his seat before the console board of the computer and controls. “Is there anything else, gentlemen?”

Trace looked at him steadily. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there is. We will have to have a look at that other room.”

Dr. Vianti let his gaze drop to his hands, resting quietly on the control panel. Helplessly he stood up and led them towards the door. “It is a harmless avocation, gentlemen. I assure you that since ordered to operate Mocklem Mines, I have given the mines very nearly all of my waking hours. Production figures will substantiate this statement. However, I am not a young man, and the nights grow long. Since I am denied repeal of my sentence, and have no contacts with the world beyond these mines, I sought my own amusements…”

He pushed open the door and stood aside for them to enter. The room was a work-room, with sturdy tables of metal, electronics equipment, chemicals on stonework counters, a second computer, this one in the open, not closed in by the commercial panels. And at the left side of the room there was a robot.

Trace felt his skin prickle when he saw it. The robot swivelled a dome that protruded from the cylindrical body, and the dome was fitted with slits that gleamed with the transparent green pyroxenite, ground and polished to glasslike smoothness and clarity. Trace knew the robot was looking at him.

It moved towards them, moving on treads instead of the wheels the other mining robots were equipped with. Its mid-section was open, a maze of wiring, with the laser tubes showing, with circuitry, things that looked like solenoid cells, monolithic crystals, transistors… Trace didn’t know what some of the things were that he caught a glimpse of before the thing halted and returned to the place where it had been when they entered. It turned at a word from Dr. Vianti.

“It can understand oral commands?” Duncan asked, awed by the robot.

“A few,” Dr. Vianti said. “Only a few. It is very primitive still…”

He wanted them to leave, Trace knew. The doctor stood at the door, holding it open for them, wishing them out. “What else have you added?” Trace asked.

“Nothing! Nothing! The treads… an experiment to forestall the kind of accident we witnessed today.”

“It has extra waldoes,” Trace said, looking at the monstrous machine from across the room, not wishing to get closer to it. It was about ten feet tall, not counting the treads. The dome had added two feet to its height.

“Yes, one extra set. Sometimes from the mines there are almost pure strains… if they could be bathed in hydrochloric acid they would be perfect… platinum insoluble, but the gabbro… Platinum waldoes…” His voice was agonised, and when Trace turned to look at him his pallor had spread and he looked as if he might faint.

“You were ordered to stop experimentation, is that it?” Trace asked

The doctor nodded.

“I see.” He turned to stare at the monster again. “I don’t think they would penalise you for perfecting it even more, would they?” He swung about again and said harshly, “I do have to report it, you know. It’s my duty.”

“I know,” Dr. Vianti said. “How long?”

“Months. I’ll be in space again tomorrow. It’ll be months before the report is filed and acted on…”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the doctor said.

“They are gone, Grandfather,” the young girl said, slipping inside the room where Dr. Vianti was still standing quietly before the robot.

“But they will send others,” he said. “They are afraid of the robot.”

“Not of it, Grandfather, of the mind that could develop it. Those Earthmen are afraid of superiority in any form, and they recognize it in you. Why else hold you here a prisoner?”

He smiled at her gently, then visibly shook himself. “Well, I have several months yet in which to play with my toy. Now it’s only a toy, but later… It would have made a difference for our people… ” He sighed and approached the monstrous metal machine, touching it with obvious affection.

Over twice as tall as the little man, the robot stood, enough space within its metal covering to contain two layers of four men each the size of the doctor. Yet, despite its immensity, he had refined its tactile receptors so that it could sense a change in temperature of 1/100th of one degree, or could handle fragile hair-like peridot crystals without shattering them.

“We must prepare a paper,” he said. “Perhaps one day…”

The girl’s mouth tightened, but when he turned his brilliant green eyes towards her she bowed her head. Both knew his paper would never be published. “Will you use the dictation machine, Grandfather?”

“I think not, my child. Perhaps you would make notes…” The dictation machine automatically recorded in the World Group Government building.