“The attempt on my life, the humanoids announced, proved that their elaborate defenses of the Central and the Prime Directive still were not enough. They were preparing to evacuate the entire population of the planet to homes on other worlds. When I tried to change the Directive, they sent me away with the rest.”
Underhill peered at the worn old man in the dark.
“But you have this immunity?” he said, puzzled. “How could they coerce you?”
“I had tried to shield myself,” Sledge told him. “I had built into the relays an injunction that the humanoids must not interfere with my freedom of action, or come into a place where I am, or touch me at all, without my specific request. Unfortunately, however, I had been too anxious to guard the Prime Directive from any human tampering.
“When I went into the tower, to change the relays, they followed me. They wouldn’t let me reach the crucial relay. When I persisted, they ignored the immunity order. They overpowered me, to put me aboard the cruiser. Now that I wanted to alter the Prime Directive, they told me, I had become as dangerous as any other man. I must never return to Wing IV.”
Hunched on the stool, the old man made an empty shrug.
“Ever since, I’ve been an exile. My only dream has been to stop the humanoids. Three times I tried to go back, with weapons on the cruiser to destroy the Central, but their patrol ships always challenged me before I was near enough to strike. The last time, they seized the cruiser and captured the few men with me. They removed the unhappy memories and the dangerous purposes of my companions. Because of that immunity, however, they let me go again.
“Since, I’ve been a refugee. From planet to planet, year after year, I’ve had to keep moving trying to stay ahead of them. On several different worlds, I have published my rhodomagnetic discoveries and tried to make men strong enough to withstand their advance. But rhodomagnetic science is dangerous. Men who have learned it need protection more than any others, under the Prime Directive. The humanoids have always come, too soon.”
The old man sighed again.
“They can spread very fast, with their new rhodomagnetic ships. There is no limit to their hordes. Wing IV must be one single hive of them now, and they are trying to carry the Prime Directive to every human planet. There’s no escape, except to stop them.”
Underhill was staring at the toy-like machines, the long bright needle and the dull leaden ball, dim in the dark on the kitchen table. Anxiously he whispered:
“But you hope to stop them, now—with that?”
“If we can finish it in time.”
“But how?” Underhill shook his head. “It’s so tiny.”
“Big enough,” Sledge insisted. “Because it’s something they don’t understand. They are perfectly efficient in the integration and application of everything they know, but they are not creative.”
He gestured at the gadgets on the table.
“This device doesn’t look impressive, but it is something new. It uses rhodomagnetic energy to build atoms, not to fission them. The more stable atoms, you know, are those near the middle of the periodic scale; energy can be released by fusing light atoms, as well as by breaking up heavy ones.”
The deep voice had a sudden ring of power.
“This device is the key to the energy of the stars. For stars shine with the liberated energy of building atoms, of hydrogen converted into helium, chiefly, through the carbon cycle. This device will start the fusion process as a chain reaction, through the catalytic effect of a tuned rhodomagnetic beam of the intensity and frequency required.
“The humanoids will not allow any man within three light-years of the Central, now—but they can’t suspect the possibility of this device. I can use it from here—to turn the hydrogen in the seas of Wing IV into helium, and most of that helium and the oxygen into heavier atoms, still. A hundred years from now, astronomers on this planet should observe the flash of a brief and sudden nova in that direction. But the humanoids ought to stop, the instant we release the beam.”
Underhill sat tense and frowning in the dark. The old man’s voice was convincing; that grim story had a solemn ring of truth. He could see the black and silent humanoids, flitting ceaselessly about the faintly glowing walls of that new mansion across the alley. He had quite forgotten his low opinion of Aurora’s tenants.
“We’ll be killed, I suppose?” he asked huskily. “That chain reaction—”
Sledge shook his emaciated head.
“The catalytic process requires a certain very low intensity of radiation,” he explained. “In our atmosphere here, the beam will be too intense to start any reaction—we can even use the device here in the room, because the walls will be transparent to the beam.”
Underhfll nodded, relieved. He was just a small business man, upset because his business had been destroyed, unhappy because his freedom was slipping away. He hoped that Sledge could stop the humanoids, but he didn’t want to be a martyr.
“Good!” He caught a deep breath. “Now what has to be done?”
Sledge gestured toward the table.
“The integrator itself is nearly complete,” he said. “A small fusion generator, in that lead shield. Rhodomagnetic converter, tuning coils, transmission mirrors, and focusing needle. What we lack is the director.”
“Director?”
“The sighting instrument,” Sledge explained. “Any sort of telescopic sight would be useless, you see—the planet must have moved a good bit in the last hundred years, and the beam must be extremely narrow to reach so far. Well have to use a rhodomagnetic scanning ray, with an electronic converter to make an image we can see. —I have an oscilliscope, and drawings for the other parts.”
He climbed stiffly down from the high stool, and snapped on the lights at last—cheap fluorescent fixtures, which a man could light and extinguish for himself. He unrolled his drawings and explained the work that Underhill could do. Underhill agreed to come back early next morning.
“I can bring some tools from my workshop,” he added. “There’s a small lathe I used to turn parts for models, a portable drill, and a vise.”
“We need them,” the old man said. “But watch yourself. You don’t have my immunity, remember. And, if they ever suspect, mine is gone.”
Reluctantly, then, he left the shabby little rooms with the cracks in the yellowed plaster and the worn familiar carpets over the manmade floor. He shut the door behind him—a common, creaking wooden door, simple enough for a man to work. Trembling and afraid, he went back down the steps and across to the new shining door that he couldn’t open.
“At your service, Mr. Underhill.” Before he could lift his hand to knock, that bright smooth panel slid back silently. Inside, the little black mechanical stood waiting, blind and forever alert. “Your dinner is ready, sir.”
Something made him shudder. In its slender naked grace, he could see the power of all those teeming horses, benevolent and yet appalling, perfect and invincible. The flimsy little weapon that Sledge called an integrator seemed suddenly a forlorn and foolish hope. A black depression settled upon him, but he didn’t dare to show it.
VII
Underhill went circumspectly down the basement steps next morning to steal his own tools. He found the basement enlarged and changed. The new floor, warm and dark and elastic, made his feet as silent as a humanoid’s. The new walls shone softly. Neat luminous signs identified several new doors: LAUNDRY, STORAGE, GAME ROOM, WORKSHOP.
He paused uncertainly in front of the workshop. The new sliding panel glowed with soft greenish light. It was locked. The lock had no keyhole, but only a little oval plate of some white metal that doubtless covered a rhodomagnetic relay. He pushed at it, uselessly.
“At your service, Mr. Underhill.” He made a guilty start, and tried not to show the sudden trembling in his knees. He had made sure that one humanoid would be busy for half an hour, washing Aurora’s hair, and he hadn’t known there was another in the house. It must have come out of the door marked STORAGE, for it stood there motionless beneath the sign, benevolently solicitous, beautiful and terrible. “What do you wish?”
“Er—nothing.” Its blind steel eyes were staring. Afraid that it would see his secret purpose, he groped desperately for logic. “Just looking around.” His voice came hoarse and dry. “Some improvements you’ve made!” He nodded suddenly at the door marked GAME ROOM. “What’s in there?”
It didn’t even have to move, to work the concealed relay. The bright panel slid silently open as he started toward it. Dark walls, beyond, burst into soft luminescence. The room was bare.
“We are manufacturing recreational equipment,” it explained brightly. “We shall furnish the room as soon as possible.”
To end an awkward pause, Underhill muttered hoarsely, “Little Frank has a set of darts, and I think we had some old exercising clubs.”
“We have taken them away,” the humanoid informed him softly. “Such instruments are dangerous. We shall furnish safe equipment.” Suicide, he remembered, was also forbidden.
“A set of wooden blocks, I suppose,” he said bitterly.
“Wooden blocks are dangerously hard,” it told him gently. “Wooden splinters can be harmful. We manufacture plastic building blocks, which are entirely safe. Do you wish a set of those?”
Speechless, he merely stared at its dark, graceful face.
“We shall also have to remove the tools from your workshop,” it informed him softly. “Such tools are excessively dangerous. We can, however, supply you with equipment for shaping soft plastics.”
“Thanks,” he muttered uneasily. “No rush about that.”
