Was this the beginning of a ghastly new war, or had the sinister kidnappings a different meaning?
Harry Vinson entered the room eagerly. It was two hours earlier than he intended, but his anticipation of watching the finale of eight years' intense work was too great. Vinson had scarcely slept that night.
He had itched to try the machine out the evening before; only careful judgment kept him from it. The machine required a full twelve-hour period for warming up; to putter with it before it had reached its stable operating temperature would have been as senseless as attempting to fly with an aircraft only half completed.
But now --
Vinson stopped cold, three steps inside of the door. The vast room was empty, the machine was gone. The aisles and aisles of neatly machined rack and panel were bare; all that remained was the linoleum in the aisles --
That and the floor-studs now gleamed nakedly, each with its nut placed precisely before it on the edge of the linoleum. Far down the empty hall a power junction box was open; its heavy switches open; its fuses pulled. The busbars that carried power to the machine had been unbolted and the bare end reached out like the butt of an amputated arm.
Vinson's mind could have coped with ruin from natural causes -- such as tornado or earthquake -- even though the site of this building had been carefully selected to avoid such dangers. Vinson could have accepted unnatural ruin, such as sabotage -- though again the site of the building had been kept as secret as could be to avoid such. But this was not destruction, either from foreign agents or the fury of nature.
This was complete dis-installation; theft; ton after ton of ultra-complex electro-mechanical gear neatly disconnected and removed during the course of one eight-hour period.
It was far too much to believe. Harry Vinson's mind rebelled; he reeled dizzily, turned in a dreamlike stupor and left the room. Moments later he was in his car and driving back to his bachelor quarters in the city, some miles away. Vinson was still in a daze as he undressed and got into bed.
He slept for an hour, which brought him to his regular time for arising, and awoke feeling the aftermath of a terrifying nightmare. He remembered himself in the grip of a gleaming mechanical monster, a lovely, frightened girl beside him. In his hand was some sort of pistol which shot out a futile beam at the ensnaring metal talons; he was high in the air of some strange world, which spread out below him. Harry Vinson smiled grimly; the nightmare was symbolic, of course, and he wondered just what the dream had symbolized.
To dream of eight years of work disappearing overnight. dream himself captured by machinery! It might be a good idea to talk to Doc Caldwell; he could help. Harry wondered whether he might have been working too hard, then shook his head and stopped thinking about it as best he could. No man, Caldwell had said, should try to analyze his own subconscious.
The nightmare memory faded, driven out of Vinson's mind by the eagerness of watching the machine work. He made coffee, washed his cup quickly, and in another five minutes was driving out across the wide, open plain towards the building.
Narina Varada was a dark beauty, almost oriental-looking. Her features were sensitive, changing with her mood from a laughing vitality when pleased to a Madonna-like impassiveness when serious. In either case she was beautiful; and when her face reflected terror the sight of it would have moved a bronze image to compassion.
But that which menaced Narina was colder than bronze and harder than cold steel.
Terror and wonder were in her face now. It was one thing to avoid a machine running wild; it was something entirely different to flee from a machine guided by someone trying to run you down. In either case the machine has no attitude; it is merely the insensate tool. But when a small mobile device, built to perform a routine operation, turns from some job it is not supposed to do and drives you into a corner like a thief interrupted in his work -- --
That could not be endured without terror.
There was no other human in sight but Narina; the machine had no human guidance that she could see. It should, then, be a simple machine that got off its tracks, out of its routine line, easily to be avoided or stopped.
But this was no insensate structure of metal and glass. The act of an unguided machine is far from the sentient behavior that trapped Narina in a corner. She could see over the top, and around the sides, of the little machine. The room was filled with rack and panels, and other small devices swarmed along the aisles. Tongs and grapplers that were fashioned only to make routine replacement of parts were not replacing parts. Inexplicably, they were unfastening nuts that held the racks and the panels to the floor. They were lifting each individual bay onto dolly trucks and trundling them out into a field near the building -- out where Narina could not see them.
Narina could not know where they were going but she could guess. This was an attempt at theft; the chances were high that the stolen parts were being trundled across the field to a ship moored for the moment to the abandoned wharf.
These were clever little machines -- sort of a part of a mechanical nervous system, she knew. Like ganglion. In the human body, a cut finger will send a nervous impulse of pain to inform the brain that damage has been done. The brain directs the rest of the body to apply first aid or, in more desperate cases to seek a doctor. In this mechanical device, the creation was superior to a human body. A damaged part sent its impulse not to a brain for further consideration, but to a master selector system that sent one of these little machines rolling down set tracks to replace the defective part.
But instead of minding their business as any insensate machine should, these same little devices were dismantling the master machine with the utmost efficiency and were carting it away.
Narina's lip curled in anger, now; anger and jealousy replaced fear, she knew of only one other country on earth where its citizens prided themselves in their mechanical ability. The country where 'Goldberg' means a complicated mechanical gadget instead of a man's name. Anger -- and now frustration -- For America was not even supposed to have an inkling of the fact that this machine was being built, let alone the ability to control the machine's own repair devices in some completely inexplicable manner.
Spies, she thought. And then she was forced to admit to herself that her country's own spies had managed to ferret out enough of the secrets of the American machine to enable her and others of her countrymen to reproduce it.
The machine before her moved slightly. impatience?
The tempo of work had increased, and now the last of the gleaming racks and panels were being removed. As they were trundled out Narina saw her captor move forward with mechanical precision. She cried out as the tongs and grapples reached for her, lifted her from her feet, and carried her from the room.
Across the field she was taken, to the ship she expected to be there. Panic came, panic and then realization of complete helplessness.
For how could a machine catch a human being -- when the mechanism had no eyes!
Eyes or not, the little machines were efficient; they moved about the cargo ship knowingly, and the finest human crew could not have made the ship ready, and cast away, in less time. Narina, from her prison in a small stateroom, watched the shores of her native country recede through a porthole too small for her to wriggle through.
She took solace in bitter tears.
Captain Jason Charless sat idly on the grille that looked down across a vast room full of cigar-shaped metal things with stubby wings. Behind him was a control panel and next to it a complex computing machine. From this room, buried deep in a man-made cavern in the mountains, Charless -- or any of his command -- could calculate and then direct any one of the horde of guided missiles to any place on earth. A millionth of a second after it had arrived at its destination, that place would cease to exist save as a cloud of incandescent gas, a wave of radiant energy, and a mounting white pillar of radioactive particles.
It was a dull job; a nasty job; a job no man would accept willingly. A policeman, Jason thought bitterly, directs his energies in many ways besides shooting criminals. But Charless could only sit and wait -- hoping he would never be called to compute and then direct even the smallest of these devil's eggs against an active enemy.
On the floor of that cave was a planet-staggering quantity of atomic explosive. That it might go off did not occur to Charless. It could not; it was impossible because he, Captain Jason Charless, held complete and absolute control over every bit of its complex machinery at the dials and buttons of the control panels.
He was the master --
Jason Charless blinked foolishly. At the far end of the vast cave, the sealed door opened swiftly.
"Who -- ? " he called angrily, then turned to look at his control panel; it was inert.
Then at the far end of the floor, Guided Missile Number One lifted on its launching rack and roared into life. It zoomed through the open door with the thunder of hell and was gone into the sky.
Charless swore viciously. He grabbed the telephone to give someone particular and official hell for not telling him -- _but he controlled them_.
Not an indicator was showing on his panel.
Did he really control them?
Missile Number Two raised and zoomed out, its rocket exhaust thundering in the vast cave. He saw Number Three follow Number Two, then Number Four followed Number Three. Number Five left with split-second timing, and Number Six followed. Number Seven left as Charless sounded the general alert, and Number Eight zoomed into the sky before the sirens began to sound.
Number Thirty-seven had passed the open door by the time Charless managed to get his call through to his commanding officer. Number Eighty-one went out on its trail of flame by the time that General Lloyd's official command came into the cave on feet driven by fear. Number Two Hundred arrowed into the upper air while Lloyd's men were searching the known spectra of electromagnetic radiations in an effort to discover who or what was capable of directing radio-controlled missiles that should have been inert until Jason Charless awakened them by pressing the proper button.
Number Seven Hundred Sixty-three roared skywards as General Lloyd's men turned from their instruments in despair. Number Eight Hundred Fifty-seven left at the instant that General Lloyd asked for a volunteer to -- die.
Number Eleven Hundred Forty-two left --
With Jason Charless as passenger, carrying a small portable radio transmitter, in place of two hundred pounds of atomic warhead.
The last -- Number Two Thousand -- cleared the cave before the white-faced General Lloyd succeeded in contacting Secretary of War Hegeman and telling him the unbelievable tale.
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