“I tried to undo what I had done. Fighting mechanicals, armed with rhodomagnetic weapons, had desolated the planet. Now I began designing rhodomagnetic mechanicals to clear the rubble and rebuild the ruins.

“I tried to design these new mechanicals to forever obey certain implanted commands, so that they could never be used for war or crime or any other injury to mankind. That was very difficult technically, and it got me into more difficulties with a few politicians and military adventurers who wanted unrestricted mechanicals for their own military schemes—while little worth fighting for was left on Wing IV, there were other planets, happy and ripe for the looting.

“Finally, to finish the new mechanicals, I was forced to disappear. Escaping on an experimental rhodomagnetic craft with a number of the best mechanicals I had made, I managed to reach an island continent where the fission of deep ores had destroyed the whole population.

“At last we landed on a bit of level plain, surrounded with tremendous new mountains. Hardly a hospitable spot. The soil was buried under layers of black clinkers and poisonous mud. The dark precipitous new summits all around were jagged with fracture-planes and mantled with lava-flows. The highest peaks were already white with snow, but volcanic cones were still pouring out clouds of death. Everything had the color of fire and the shape of fury.

“I had to take fantastic precautions there, to protect my own life. I stayed aboard the ship until the first shielded laboratory was finished. I wore elaborate armor and breathing masks. I used every medical resource to repair the damage from destroying rays and particles. Even so, I fell desperately ill.

“But the mechanicals were at home there. The radiation didn’t hurt them. The fearsome surroundings couldn’t depress them, because they weren’t alive. There, in that spot so alien and hostile to life, the humanoids were born.”

Stooped and bleakly cadaverous in the growing dark, the old man fell silent for a little time. His haggard eyes stared solemnly at the small hurried shapes that moved like restless shadows out across the alley, silently building a strange new palace which glowed faintly in the night.

“Somehow, I felt at home there, too,” his deep, hoarse voice went on deliberately. “My belief in my own kind was gone. Only mechanicals were with me, and I put my faith in them. I was determined to build better mechanicals, immune to human imperfections, able to save men from themselves.

“The humanoids became the dear children of my sick mind. There is no need to describe the labor-pains. There were errors, abortions, monstrosities. There was sweat and agony and heartbreak. Some years passed before the safe delivery of the first perfect humanoid.

“Then there was the Central to build—for all the individual humanoids were to be no more than the limbs and the senses of a single mechanical brain. That was what opened the possibility of real perfection. The old electronic mechanicals, with their separate brain-relays and their own feeble batteries, had built-in limitations. They were necessarily stupid, weak, clumsy, slow. Worst of all, it seemed to me, they were exposed to human tampering.

“The Central rose above those imperfections. Its power beams supplied every unit with unfailing energy from great fission plants. Its control beams provided each unit with an unlimited memory and surpassing intelligence. Best of all—so I then believed—it could be securely protected from any human meddling.

“The whole reaction-system was designed to protect itself from any interference by human selfishness or fanaticism. It was built to insure the safety and the happiness of men, automatically. You know the Prime Directive: To serve and obey, and guard men from harm.

“The old individual mechanicals I had brought helped to manufacture the parts, and I put the first section of Central together with my own hands. That took three years. When it was finished, the first waiting humanoid came to life.”

Sledge peered moodily through the dark at Underhill. “It really seemed alive to me,” his slow deep voice insisted. “Alive, and more wonderful than any human being, because it was created to preserve life. Ill and alone, I was yet the proud father of a new creation; perfect, forever free from any possible choice of evil.

“Faithfully, the humanoids obeyed the Prime Directive. The first units built others, and they built underground factories to mass-produce the coming hordes. Their new ships poured ores and sand into atomic furnaces under the plain, and new perfect humanoids came marching back out of the dark mechanical matrix.

“The swarming humanoids built a new tower for the Central, a white and lofty metal pylon standing splendid in the midst of that fire-scarred desolation. Level on level they joined new relay-sections into one brain, until its grasp was almost infinite.

“Then they went out to rebuild the ruined planet, and later to carry their perfect service to other worlds. I was well pleased, then. I thought I had found the end of war and crime, of poverty and inequality, of human blundering and resulting human pain.”

The old man sighed, moving heavily in the dark.

“You can see that I was wrong.”

Underhill drew his eyes back from the dark unresting things, shadow-silent, building that growing palace outside the window. A small doubt arose in him, for he was used to scoffing privately at much less remarkable tales from Aurora’s remarkable tenants. But the worn old man had spoken with a quiet and sober air. And the black invaders, he reminded himself, had not intruded here.

“Why didn’t you stop them?” he asked. “When you could?”

“I stayed too long at the Central.” Sledge sighed again, regretfully. “I was useful there, until everything was finished. I designed new fission plants, and even planned methods for introducing the humanoid service with a minimum of confusion and opposition.”

Underhill grinned wryly in the dark.

“I’ve met the methods,” he commented. “Quite efficient.”

“I must have worshipped efficiency then,” Sledge agreed. “Dead facts, abstract truth, mechanical perfection. I must have hated the fragilities of human beings, because I was content to polish the perfection of the new humanoids. It’s a sorry confession, but I found a kind of happiness in that dead wasteland. Actually, I’m afraid I fell in love with my own creations.”

His hollowed eyes had a fevered gleam.

“I was awakened, at last, by a man who came to kill me.”

VI

Gaunt and bent, the old man moved stiffly in the thickening gloom. Underhill shifted his balance, careful of the crippled chair. He waited until the slow deep voice went on:

“I never learned just who he was, or exactly how he came. No ordinary man could have accomplished what he did. I used to wish that I had known him sooner. He must have been a remarkable physicist and an expert mountaineer. I imagine that he had also been a hunter. I know that he was intelligent and terribly determined.

“Yes, he really came to kill me.

“Somehow, he reached that great island, undetected. There were still no other inhabitants—the humanoids allowed no man but me to come so near the Central. But somehow he came past their search beams and their automatic weapons.

“The shielded plane he had used was later found, abandoned on a high glacier. He came down the rest of the way on foot through those raw new mountains, where no paths existed. Somehow, he came alive across lava-beds that were still burning with deadly atomic fire.

“Concealed with some sort of rhodomagnetic screen—I was never allowed to examine it—he came undiscovered across the spaceport that now covered most of that great plain, and into the new city around the Central tower. It must have taken more courage and resolve than most men have, but I never learned exactly how he did it.

“Somehow, he got to my office in the tower. When he screamed at me, I looked up to see him in the doorway. He was nearly naked, scraped and bloody from the mountains. He had a gun in his raw, red hand. But the thing that shocked me was the burning hatred in his eyes.”

Hunched on that high stool, the old man shuddered.

“I had never seen such monstrous, unutterable hatred, not even in the victims of the war. I had never heard such hatred as rasped at me, in the few words he screamed. ‘I’ve come to kill you, Sledge. To stop your mechanicals, and set men free.’

“Of course he was mistaken, there. It was already far too late for my death to stop the humanoids, but he didn’t know that. He lifted his unsteady gun in both bleeding hands, and fired.

“His screaming challenge had given me a second or so of warning. I dropped down behind the desk. That first shot revealed him to the humanoids, which somehow hadn’t been aware of him before. They piled on him, before he could fire again. They took away the gun and ripped off a kind of net of fine white wire that had covered his body—that must have been part of his screen.

“His hatred was what awoke me. I had always assumed that most men, except for a few thwarted predators, would be grateful for the humanoids. I found it hard to understand his hatred, but the humanoids told me now that many men had required drastic treatment by brain-surgery, drugs, and hypnosis to make them happy under the Prime Directive. This was not the first desperate effort to kill me that they had blocked.

“I wanted to question the stranger, but the humanoids rushed him away to an operating room. When they finally let me see him, he gave me a pale silly grin from his bed. He remembered his name; he even knew me—the humanoids have developed a remarkable skill at such treatments. But he didn’t know how he got to my office, or even that he had tried to kill me. He kept whispering that he liked the humanoids, because they existed just to make men happy. He said that he was very happy now. As soon as he was able to be moved, they took him to the spaceport. I never saw him again.

“I began to see what I had done. The humanoids had built me a rhodomagnetic yacht, that I used to take for long cruises at space, working aboard—I used to like the perfect quiet, and the feel of being the only human being within a hundred million miles. Now I called for the yacht, and started out on a junket around the planet, to learn why that man had hated me.”

The old man nodded at the dim hastening shapes, busy across the alley, putting together that strange shining palace in the soundless dark.

“You can imagine what I found,” he said. “Bitter futility, imprisoned in empty splendor. The humanoids were too efficient, with their care for the safety and happiness of men. There was nothing left for men to do.”

He peered down in the increasing gloom at his own great hands, competent yet, but battered and scarred with a lifetime of effort. They clenched into fighting fists, and wearily relaxed again.

“I found something worse than war and crime and want and death.” His low rumbling voice held a savage bitterness. “Bitter futility. Men sat with idle hands, because there was nothing left for them to do. They were pampered prisoners, really, locked up in a highly efficient jail. Perhaps they tried to play, but there was nothing left worth playing for. Most active sports were declared too dangerous for men, under the Prime Directive. Science was forbidden, because laboratories can manufacture danger. Scholarship was needless, because the humanoids could answer any question. Art had degenerated into grim reflection of futility. Purpose and hope were dead. No goal was left for existence. You could take up some inane hobby, play a pointless game of cards, or go for a harmless walk in the park—with always the humanoids watching. They were stronger than men, better at everything, swimming or chess, singing or archeology. They must have given the race a mass complex of inferiority.

“No wonder men had tried to kill me. Because there was no escape from that dead futility. Nicotine was disapproved. Alcohol was rationed. Drugs were forbidden. Sex was carefully supervised. Even suicide was deady contradictory to the Prime Directive—and the humanoids had learned to keep all possible lethal instruments out of reach.”

Staring at the last pale gleam on that thin palladium needle, the old man sighed again.

“When I got back to the Central, I tried to modify the Prime Directive. I had never meant it to be applied so thoroughly. Now I saw that it must be changed, to give men freedom to live and to grow, to work and to play, to risk their lives if they pleased, to choose and take the consequences.

“But that stranger had come too late. I had built the Central too well. The Prime Directive was too well protected from human meddling—even from my own.