once in a while, perhaps, on some far-off planet where a human must kill to protect his life or to uphold human dignity and power. But, by and large, there is no need of killing.
'And yet you kill. You must kill. The old brutality is in you. You are drunk with power and killing is a sign of power. It has become a habit with you…a thing you've carried from the caves. There's nothing left to kill but one another, so you kill one another and you call it dueling. You know it's wrong and you're hypocritical about it. You've set up a fine system of semantics to make it sound respectable and brave and noble. You call it traditional and chivalric…and even if you don't call it that in so many words, that is what you think. You cloak it with the trappings of your vicious past, you dress it up with words and the words are only tinsel.'
'Look,' said Sutton, 'I don't want to fight this duel. I don't think it's…'
There was vindictive glee in the robot's voice.
'But you've got to fight it. There's no way to back out. Maybe you would like some pointers. I have all sorts of tricks…'
'I thought you didn't approve of dueling.'
'I don't,' the robot said. 'But it's my job. I'm stuck with it. I try to do it well. I can tell you the personal history of every man who ever fought a duel. I can talk for hours on the advantage of rapiers over pistols. Or if you'd rather I argued for pistols, I can do that, too. I can tell you about the old American West gun slicks and the Chicago gangsters and the handkerchief and dagger deals and…'
'No, thanks,' said Sutton.
'You aren't interested?'
'I haven't got the time.'
'But, sir,' the robot pleaded, 'I don't get a chance too often. I don't get many calls. Just an hour or so…'
'No,' said Sutton, firmly.
'All right, then. Maybe you'd tell me who has challenged you.'
'Benton. Geoffrey Benton.'
The robot whistled.
'Is he that good?' asked Sutton.
'All of it,' the robot said.
Sutton shut the visor off.
He sat quietly in his chair, staring at the gun. Slowly he reached out a hand and picked it up. The butt fitted snugly in his hand. His finger curled around the trigger. He lifted it and sighted at the doorknob.
It was easy to handle. Almost as if it were a part of him. There was a feel of power within it…of power and mastery. As if he suddenly were stronger and greater…and more dangerous.
He sighed and laid it down.
The robot had been right.
He reached out to the visor, pushed the signal for the lobby desk.
Ferdinand's face came in.
'Anyone waiting down there for me, Ferdinand?'
'Not a soul,' said Ferdinand.
'Anyone asked for me?'
'No one, Mr. Sutton.'
'No reporters? Or photographers?'
'No, Mr. Sutton. Were you expecting them?'
Sutton didn't answer.
He cut off, feeling very silly.
VI
Man was spread thin throughout the galaxy. A lone man here, a handful there. Slim blobs of bone and brain and muscle to hold a galaxy in check. Slight shoulders to hold up the cloak of human greatness spread across the light-years.
For Man had flown too fast, had driven far beyond his physical capacity. Not by strength did he hold his starry outposts, but by something else…by depth of human character, by his colossal conceit, by his ferocious conviction that Man was the greatest living thing the galaxy had spawned. All this in spite of many evidences that he was not…evidence that he took and evaluated and cast aside, scornful of any greatness that was not ruthless and aggressive.
Too thin, Christopher Adams told himself. Too thin and stretched too far. One man backed by a dozen androids and a hundred robots could hold a solar system. Could hold it until there were more men or until something cracked.
In time there'd be more men, if the birthrate held. But it would be many centuries before the line would grow much thicker, for Man held only the key points…one planet in an entire system, and not in every system. Man had leap-frogged since there weren't men enough, had set up strategic spheres of influence, had by-passed all but the richest, most influential systems.
There was room to spread, room for a million years.
If there were any humans left in a million years.
If the life on those other planets let the humans live, if there never came a day when they would be willing to pay the terrible price of wiping out the race.
The price would be high, said Adams, talking to himself. But it would be done, and it would be easy. Just a few hours' job. Humans in the morning, no humans left by night. What if a thousand others died for every human death…or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand? Under certain circumstances, such a price might well be counted cheap.
There were islands of resistance even now where one walked carefully…or even walked around. Like 61 Cygni, for example.
It took judgment…and some tolerance…and a great measure of latent brutality, but, most of all, conceit, the absolute, unshakable conviction that Man was sacrosanct, that he could not be touched, that he could scarcely die.
But five men had died, three humans and two androids, beside a river that flowed on Aldebaran XII, just a few short miles from Andrelon, the planetary capital.
They had died of violence, of that there was no question.
Adams' eyes sought out the paragraph of Thorne's latest report:
Force had been applied from the outside. We found a hole burned through the atomic shielding of the engine. The force must have been controlled or it would have resulted in absolute destruction. The automatics got in their-work and headed off the blast, but the machine went out of control and smashed into the tree. The area was saturated with intensive radiation.
Good man, Thorne, thought Adams. He won't let a single thing be missed. He had those robots in there before the place was cool.
But there wasn't much to find…not much that gave an answer. Just a batch of question marks.
Five men had died and when that was said, that was the end of fact. For they were burned and battered and there were no features left, no fingerprints or eyeprints to match against the records.
A few feet away from the strewn blackness of the bodies the machine had smashed into a tree, had wrapped itself around and half sheared the trunk in two. A machine that, like the men, was without a record. A machine without a counterpart in the known galaxy and, so far at least, a machine without a purpose.
Thorne would give it the works. He would set it up in solidographs, down to the last shattered piece of glass and plastic. He would have it analyzed and diagramed and the robots would put it in scanners that would peel it and record it molecule by molecule.
And they might find something. Just possibly they might.
