Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

“Yes, R.C., this is Garrison.”

“Well,” piped R.C., “what’s the trouble now? Speak up, man, what’s gone wrong this time?”

Swiftly Garrison told him. Twice static blotted out the tight beam and Sparks worked like a demon to re-establish contact.

“And what are you afraid of?” shrieked the man on Earth.

“Simply this,” explained Garrison, wishing it didn’t sound so silly. “Archie has escaped. That means all the radon knows as much as he did. If we pump new radon into the brains, we’ll be pumping in intelligent radon—that is, radon that knows about us—that is—”

“Poppycock,” yelled R.C. “That’s the biggest lot of damn foolishness I’ve ever heard.”

“But, R.C.—”

“Look here, young man,” fumed the voice, “we’re behind schedule, aren’t we? You’re out there to dig radium, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” admitted Garrison, hopelessly.

“All right, then, dig radium. Get back on schedule. Fill up those brains and tear into it—”

“But you don’t understand—”

“I said to fill up those brains and get to work. And keep working!”

“Those are orders?” asked Garrison.

“Those are orders!” snapped R.C.

Static howled at them derisively.

Garrison watched the ship roar away from the surface, lose itself in the driving whiteness of solidified formaldehyde. Beside him, Mac rubbed armored hands together in exultation.

“That almost puts us on schedule,” he announced.

Garrison nodded, staring moodily out over the field. It was night again, and little wind devils of formaldehyde danced and jigged across the ground. Night and a snowstorm, and the mercury at one hundred forty degrees above Fahrenheit. During the week-long day it got hotter.

He heard the clicking of the mighty brain-controlled machines as they dug ore in the pits, the whine of wind around the dome and in the jagged hills, the snicking of the refrigerator units in his suit.

“How soon will you have Archie’s jar done, Mac?” he asked. “The new Institute observer is getting anxious to see what he can get out of him.”

“Just a few hours more,” said Mac. “It took us a long time to figure out some of the things about it, but I’ve had the robots on it steady.”

“Rush it over soon as you get it done. We’ve tried to talk to some of the radon brains in the machines, but it’s no dice.”

“There’s just one thing bothers me,” said Mac.

“What is that?” Garrison asked sharply.

“Well, we didn’t figure out exactly all the angles on that jar. Some of the working parts are mighty complicated and delicate, you know. But we thought we’d get started at least and let the Institute stooge take over when he got here. But when those robots—”

“Yes?” said Garrison.

“When the robots got to the things we couldn’t understand, they tossed the blueprints to one side and went right ahead. So help me, they didn’t even fumble.”

The two men looked at one another, faces stolid.

“I don’t like it,” Mac declared.

“Neither do I,” said Garrison.

He turned and walked slowly toward the dome, while Mac went back to the pits.

In Garrison’s office, Doc had cornered Roger Chester, the new Institute observer.

“The Institute has mountains of reports,” Chester was saying. “I tried to go through them before I came out. Night and day almost. Ever since I knew I was going to replace Boone.”

Doc carefully halved a new cigar, tucked one piece in his pocket, the other in his mouth.

“What were you looking for?” he asked.

“A clue. You see, I knew Boone. For years. He wasn’t the kind of fellow who would break. It would have taken more than Venus. But I didn’t find a thing.”

“Boone himself might have furnished that clue,” Doc suggested quietly. “Did you look through his reports?”

“I read them over and over,” Chester admitted. “There was nothing there. Some of his reports were missing. The last few days—”

“Those last few days can be canceled out,” said Doc. “The lad wasn’t himself. I wouldn’t be surprised he didn’t write any report those last few days.”

Chester said: “That would have been unlike him.”

Doc wrangled the cigar viciously. “Find anything else?”

“Not much. Not much more than Masterson knew. Even now—after all these years, it’s hard to believe—that radon could be alive.”

“If any gas could live,” said Doc, “it would be radon. It’s heavy. Molecular weight of 222. One hundred eleven times as heavy as hydrogen, five times as heavy as carbon dioxide. Not complicated from a molecular standpoint, but atomically one of the most complicated known. Complicated enough for life. And if you’re looking for the unbalance necessary for life, it’s radioactive. Chemically inert, perhaps, but terrifically unstable physically—”

The door of the office opened and Garrison walked in.

“Still chewing the fat about Archie?” he asked.

He strode to his desk and took out a bottle and glasses.

“It’s been two weeks since Archie got away,” he said. “And nothing’s happened. We’re sitting on top of a volcano, waiting for it to go sky high. And nothing happens. What is Archie doing? What is he waiting for?”

“That’s a big order, Garrison,” declared Chester. “Let us try to envision a life which had no tools because it couldn’t make them, would be useless to it even if it did have them because it couldn’t use them. Man’s rise, you must remember, is largely, if not entirely, attributable to his use of tools. An accident that made his thumb opposing gave him a running start—”

The phone on the desk blared. Garrison snatched it up, and Mac’s voice shrieked at him.

“Chief, those damn robots are running away! So are the machines in the pit—”

Cold fingers seemed to clamp around the commander’s throat.

Mac’s voice was almost sobbing. “—hell for leather out here. But they left Archie’s jar. Must have forgotten that.”

“Mac,” yelled Garrison, “jump into a tractor and try to follow them. Find out where they’re going.”

“But, chief—”

“Follow them!” shouted Garrison.

He slammed down the hand piece, lifted it and dialed.

“Sparks, get hold of Earth!”

“No soap,” said Sparks laconically.

“Damn it, try to get them. It’s a matter of life and death!”

“I can’t,” wailed Sparks. “We’re around the Sun. We can’t get through.”

“Get the ship, then.”

“It won’t do any good,” yelped Sparks. “They’re hugging the Sun to cut down distance. It’ll be days before they can relay a message.”

“O.K.,” said Garrison wearily. “Forget it.”

He hung up and faced Chester.

“You don’t have to imagine Archie without tools any longer,” he said. “He has them now. He just stole them from us.”

Mac dragged in hours later.

“I didn’t find a thing,” he reported. “Not a single thing.”

Garrison studied him, red-eyed from worry. “That’s all right, Mac. I didn’t think you would. Five miles from here and you’re on unknown ground.”

“What are we going to do now, chief?”

Garrison shook his head. “I don’t know. Sparks finally got a message through. Managed to pick up Mercury, just coming around the Sun. Probably they’ll shoot it out to Mars to be relayed to Earth.”

Chester came out of the laboratory and sat down.

Doc swiveled his cigar.

“What has Archie to say?” he asked.

Chester’s face grew red. “I pumped the radon into the jar. But there was no response. Practically none, that is. Told me to go to hell.”

Doc chuckled at the man’s discomfiture. “Don’t let Archie get you down. That’s what he did to Boone. Got on his nerves. Drove him insane. Archie had to get out some way, you see. He couldn’t do anything while he was shut up in one place. So he forced Boone to let him out. Boone didn’t know what was going on, but Archie did—”