Captain Future 24 - Pardon My Iron Nerves (November 1950) (4 page)

“I installed the brains. I watched the Machs as their visual and aural senses poured sensations into their new electronic cortices. I saw them rapidly develop volition, the sense of self-preservation, the ability to compare.”

“You mean that it was you who got these Machs off the beam?” I cried, the sense of what he was saying now penetrating.

Gordon nodded, looking haggard. “Yes. But my success was too great. Before I knew it they developed so much individuality and intelligence that they refused longer to work in the ore-beds! They just roam around and let the Tenders take care of them.”

“So that’s why no ore was mined!” I exclaimed. “But why didn’t you go back? Why did you stay here?”

His voice rose hysterically. “They wouldn’t let me! They called me their Liberator for giving them intelligence but they wouldn’t let me return — and to make sure I didn’t, they took my flier away and hid it.”

He added suddenly, “Just as they’re taking away
your
craft now! Apparently they don’t want anyone leaving here!”

I sprang to the window. It was true. Two Diggers had picked up my space-sled between them. They were bearing it away.

With a howl, I jumped toward the door. But Gordon’s protest stopped me.

“You’ll only get yourself destroyed! You can’t oppose those huge machines!”

It was true. And it gave me a sharp dismay.

I turned angrily on the cyberneticist. “Why in thunder didn’t you let me know all this when I first arrived here? You must have seen me landing and walking around!”

GORDON nodded. “I did. But naturally I thought you were another Mach.”

“Just because I have an inferiority complex everybody thinks they can insult me!” I howled. “But that’s going too far!”

Gordon shrank from me again. “It’s not that you look like a Mach now — but I saw you from so far away!” he quavered. “A natural mistake.”

“I see nothing natural about it,” I growled.

There was a moment of silence. My already burdened mind was reduced to despair by this dilemma.

I had come to Dis for relief from the oppressive psychoses that too much cerebral activity had given me. And now I found myself marooned here with a rash cyberneticist and some scores of loud-mouthed intelligent Machs, any one of which could break even Grag in half.

From outside, from the wafting Machs, came a thundering bellow. “Haven’t you finished with that guy, Liberator?”

“How is it that they use such tough language?” I asked Gordon, disgustedly.

“That’s not my fault,” he answered defensively. “I let the technician who designed the syllable-selector record the vocabulary himself. Though a fine technician he’s rather illiterate in many ways. That’s the way he talked himself, so they all talk that way.”

From outside came an even more impatient roar, that shook the whole shelter. “Finish with that new guy and send him out or we’ll come for him.”

Chapter 4: Crazy Moon

GORDON turned white. “You’d better go out. If you don’t they’ll break in here.”

“What am I going to do when I go out?” I demanded.

“You can pretend that I’ve ‘liberated’ you,” he said. “You can pretend that I’ve given you intelligence.”

“What do you mean, pretend?” I cried indignantly. “I’m more intelligent than anyone here, certainly more than a cyberneticist who was crazy enough to start all this!”

A thunderous knocking on the wall of the shelter began which shook the whole structure on its foundations.

“It’s one of the Crushers,” moaned Gordon. “Please go out to them. If you do, maybe you can get them out of the way so I can get to my flier and you to your own craft and get away.”

I saw that that was our only chance of escape from this crazy little moon. Much as I hated to do it I, Grag the Futureman, had to pretend to be a Mach.

So I went out through the airlock. When I came out the waiting mob of Machs set up a deafening babble.

“How about it, guy? How does it feel to be intelligent like us?”

It was bitter humiliation for me. But facing this horde of huge stupid monsters I had to play my part.

I stretched my arms and bellowed ecstatically, “It’s wonderful —
wonderful!
Before I was just a stupid work-Mach. Now I’ve got intelligence like you!”

They swallowed it, of course. They crowded around me, congratulating me in their bellowing voices. A Crusher gave me a friendly slap on the back that knocked me twenty feet away.

I had been thinking. And I had a plan — the only one possible. If it got me to my space-sled I’d be able to take Gordon, in his suit, to his flier.

So, without showing the indignation that boiled in me, I picked myself up and addressed them.

“Brother Machs!”

It nearly blew my fuses to have to call these metal morons brothers but I forced myself to it.

“Yeah, what is it?” asked the big Digger.

“Have you thought of all the Machs that there are on other worlds Outside?” I demanded. “Shouldn’t they be liberated too?”

“Sure!” went up a cry. “Every one of them that comes here like you did we’ll have the Liberator fix them up.”

“But they can’t come — they’re enslaved,” I said dramatically. “Suppose I took the Liberator to
them!
He could free all the Machs on those worlds by making them intelligent like us!”

I had figured they’d fall for that at once. But they didn’t. It seemed they weren’t quite as stupid as all that.

“Nothing doing,” roared a Crusher. “That way they’d get to know about us Outside. They’d come here and set us all to work again if they could.”

“That’s right,” bellowed the big Digger. “For years I worked in the ore-beds, digging, digging. Why? I didn’t know why — I didn’t know anything. Now I don’t have to work. Let’s keep it that way.”

“But all our fellow-Machs outside, toiling away —” I protested.

“That’s their hard luck, chum,” retorted the Digger callously. “We got a good set-up here and we want to keep it. Huh, guys?”

They bellowed agreement. I felt baffled. The only chance of escape seemed gone.

The Digger was rumbling on. “We got enough copper atomic fuel and lubricants and repair-parts in the storehouses here to last us for years. So we’re going to enjoy life.”

These Machs were too stupid to worry about the future, I saw. All they wanted to do was to ramble idly around the moon. Just not working was new and thrilling to them.

The Digger bellowed deafeningly, “
Hey,
one of you Tenders! Come here and give our new little pal some copper!”

A Tender came rolling rapidly up to me. Its lenses glittered at me as its flexible fuel and lubricant lines snaked out toward me.

To my disgust it solicitously squirted greasy lubricant into all of my joints. Then it poked its fuel-line at me commandingly.

My indignation reached a peak. I was blasted if I, mighty Grag, was going to be fed powdered copper fuel like a Mach! If they did it I knew I’d blow all my fuses from anger as I had that time when I tried uranium fuel.

That remembrance suddenly detonated a red-hot idea in my brain! There might be a way to get out of this yet. What Grag’s strength could not achieve his great brain possibly could!

I RAISED my voice. “Do you mean to say you Machs are still living on plain copper fuel?” I demanded scornfully. “What’s the matter with you that you don’t use the actinium you mined?”

They stared at me, obviously surprised. “Actinium?” repeated the big Digger. “Is that as good atomic fuel as copper?”

“It’s fifty times
better!”
I told them. “It’s radioactive and yields many times more atomic power than copper!”

“Why didn’t
we
think of that?” cried the Digger to the other Machs. “If actinium’s better than copper we’ll use it! It belongs to us by right — we’re the ones who mined it!”

“Yeah, sure!” they cried. “Tenders, you fill your tanks with the actinium and pass it around!”

Presently the Tenders had loaded up. They now proceeded to go around amid the Machs, pumping the actinium into the fuel-chamber of each.

I felt exultant. If uranium had blown my overload fuses radioactive actinium should do the same to the atomics of all these Machs, putting them out of commission.

But my exultation changed to apprehension when a Tender came rolling up to me, extending its fuel-line.

“No, I don’t want any actinium!” I cried. “Give it to the others!”

The Digger bellowed, “No, you get your share, guy! After all you’re the one who thought of it in the first place!”

“That’s right!” cried the other Machs.

They were crowded around me and I dared not resist further lest I awaken suspicion in their rudimentary minds. I was forced to open my fuel-plate.

The Tender eagerly pumped actinium into my fuel-chamber. As I closed my fuel-plate I felt already an access of surging new strength and heard my usually noiseless atomic generators humming loudly.

Bitterly I regretted my idea. Presently my own fuses would blow and I’d be left helpless here until Curt came looking for me.

But my fuses did
not
blow. It seemed that actinium, not having quite the potential energy of uranium, did not exceed the load-limit of my generators.

What it did do was to pour such energy through my generators that all my nerves seemed on fire. My head spun a little with the impact of too much energy through my brain.

“Say, you were right — actinium’s a million times better than copper!” cried the big Digger to me, rolling closer.

“I’ll say it is — I feel better than I ever felt before!” howled a looming Crusher. And to show it he proceeded to use his pile-driver arm to crush an enormous rock to fragments with two blows.

Horrified, I perceived that all the huge Machs were acting strangely. Their movements on their caterpillar treads had become slightly uncertain. They lurched and swayed as they moved and their mechanical voices were now a deafening babble.

The terrible realization flashed over me. The actinium, pouring far too much energy through their generators into their mental circuits, was stimulating them with so much power it had unhinged their reactions.

To put it crassly these Machs were as drunk as goats.

“Fellow Machs!” roared the Digger. “I say we ought to thank our new pal for giving us this actinium idea!”

“That’s right!” thundered scores of voices. “He’s a swell Mach — one of the best!”

They deafened me for they had lost all control of voice-volume. Their uncertain movements threatened to run over me as they crowded around.

I felt my own mind becoming strange. Obviously the strain of my position had worsened my psychoses so that I too felt an unhealthy influence from the actinium-power coursing through me.

It is only my psychoses that could have been responsible for my aberration that followed. For ordinarily no excess-energy fuel could have affected me in the way it did.

Night had come by now but the great shield of Pluto poured a flood of white light. In my temporary aberration, the whole drab scene now seemed raptly beautiful, the noisy lumbering giant Machs a crowd of boon companions. I regret to say that I too raised my voice loudly, and beat upon my breast.

“I’m feeling better now!” I shouted. “I’m feeling lots better! Coming to this moon has helped my psychoses a lot!”

“That’s the boy!” they bellowed. “You’re as good a Mach as any of us even if you
are
puny.”

“Puny?”
I cried. “I’m Grag the mighty! Who was it that led the Futuremen all the way to Andromeda? Who is it that tears meteors apart and pushes comets around with his bare hands?”

“Tender!” yelled the big Digger. “Let’s have some more actinium!”

They crowded around the Tenders. It was obvious that the Tenders had filled their own fuel-chambers with actinium for the movements of their fuel and lubricant lines were unsteady.

I am sorry to confess that I too shouted, “More actinium!” and pressed toward the Tenders.

But small as I was I couldn’t get through the crowd of towering Machs around the Tenders. A big Loader flung me back out of the crowd.

Ordinarily I would have resented that bitterly. But I was too stimulated at the moment. I picked myself up and shouted again.

“My psychoses are gone — I feel like dancing!” I cried.

“Dancing? What’s that?” asked the Digger.

“It’s what people do for fun — like this,” I told him.

I had never danced before but I had often watched people doing it and had always been sure that I would be quite good at it.

So now, in the silvery planet-light, I did a slow graceful waltz for them, circling around and humming a tune as I did so.

“You do it like this, only in couples,” I explained.

THE Machs were enchanted by my performance. “Say, that looks like fun! Let’s try it!” cried a Crusher. It extended its mighty pile-driver arm. I took it and despite the disparity in size between myself and the huge Mach we performed a waltz by no means without grace — the Crusher following my lead a little uncertainly on its rumbling caterpillar treads.