guess it got out of hand. I’ll make a tape of the whole story for you, Captain. But I’d appreciate it if you’d get Napier down here. This is getting pretty messy.”
“He’s on the way,” Eve said. We hadn’t seen her call, but the doctor arrived almost immediately afterwards.
He sniffed the drug, and questioned us about the dose Wilcox had taken. Then he nodded slowly. “About two hours, I’d say. No chance at all to save him. The stuff is absorbed almost at once and begins changing to something else in the blood. I’ll be responsible, if you want.”
Muller shrugged. “I suppose so. I’d rather deliver him in irons to a jury, but…. Well, we still have a lottery to hold!”
It jerked us back to reality sharply. Somehow, I’d been fighting off the facts, figuring that finding the cause would end the results. But even with Wilcox out of the picture, there were twelve of us left—and air for only ten!
Wilcox laughed abruptly. “A favor for a favor. I can give you a better answer than a lottery.”
“Pop-corn! Bullard!” Eve slapped her head with her palm. “Captain, give me the master key.” She snatched it out of his hand and was gone at a run.
Wilcox looked disappointed, and then grinned. “Pop-corn and beans. I overlooked them myself. We’re a bunch of city hicks. But when Bullard forgot his fears in his sleep, he remembered the answer—and got it so messed up with his dream and his new place as a hero that my complaint tipped the balance. Grundy put the fear of his God into him then. And you didn’t get it. Captain, you don’t dehydrate beans and pop-corn—they come that way naturally. You don’t can them, either, if you’re saving weight. They’re seeds—put them in tanks and they grow!”
He leaned back, trying to laugh at us, as Napier finished dressing his wound. “Bullard knows where the lockers are. And corn grows pretty fast. It’ll carry you through. Do I get that favor? It’s simple enough—just to have Beethoven’s Ninth on the machine and for the whole damned lot of you to get out of my cabin and let me die in my own way!”
Muller shrugged, but Napier found the tape and put it on. I wanted to see the louse punished for every second of worry, for Lomax, for Hendrix—even for Grundy. But there wasn’t much use in vengeance at this point.
“You’re to get all this, Paul,” Wilcox said as we got ready to leave. “Captain Muller, everything here goes to Tremaine. I’ll make a tape on that, too. But I want it to go to a man who can appreciate Hohmann’s conducting.”
Muller closed the door. “I guess it’s yours,” he admitted. “Now that you’re head engineer here, Mr. Tremaine, the cabin is automatically yours. Take over. And get that junk in the fuel locker cleaned out—except enough to keep your helpers going. They’ll need it, and we’ll need their work.”
“I’ll clean out his stuff at the same time,” I said. “I don’t want any part of it.”
He smiled then, just as Eve came down with Bullard and Pietro. The fat cook was sobered, but already beginning to fill with his own importance. I caught snatches as they began to discuss Bullard’s knowledge of growing things. It was enough to know that we’d all live, though it might be tough for a while.
Then Muller gestured upwards. “You’ve got a reduced staff, Dr. Pietro. Do you intend going on to Saturn?”
“We’ll go on,” Pietro decided. And Muller nodded. They turned and headed upwards.
I stood staring at my engines. One of them was a touch out of phase and I went over and corrected it. They’d be mine for over two years—and after that, I’d be back on the lists.
Eve came over beside me, and studied them with me. Finally she sighed softly. “I guess I can see why you feel that way about them, Paul,” she said. “And I’ll be coming down to look at them. But right now, Bullard’s too busy to cook, and everyone’s going to be hungry when they find we’re saved.”
I chuckled, and felt the relief wash over me finally. I dropped my hand from the control and caught hers—a nice, friendly hand.
But at the entrance I stopped and looked back toward the cabin where Wilcox lay. I could just make out the second movement of the Ninth beginning.
I never could stand the cheap blatancy of Hohmann’s conducting.
THE DEMI-URGE
by Thomas M. Disch
There is intelligent life on Earth. After millennia of lifelessness, intelligence flourishes here with an extravagance of energy that has been a constant amazement to all the members of the survey team. It multiplies and surges to its fulfillment at an exponential rate. Even within the short period of our visit the Terrans have made significant advances. They have filled their small solar system with their own kind and now they are reaching to the stars.
We can no longer keep the existence of our Empire unknown to them.
And (though it is as incredible as [sqrt](-1)) the Terrans are slaves! Every page of the survey’s report bears witness to it.
Their captors are not alive. They do not, at least, possess the properties of life as it is known throughout the galaxy. They are—as nearly as a poor analogy can suggest—Machines! Machines cannot live, yet here on Earth machinery has reached a level of sophistication—and autonomy—quite unprecedented. Every spark of Terran life has become victim and bondslave of the incredible mechanisms. The noblest enterprises of the race are tarnished by this almost symbiotic relation.
Earth reaches to the stars, but it extends mechanical limbs. Earth ponders the universe, but the thoughts are those of a machine.
Unless the Empire acts now to set the Earth free from this strange tyranny, it may be too late. These machines are without utilitarian value. They perform no function which an intelligent being cannot more efficiently perform. Yet they inspire fear, terror, even, I must confess, a strange compulsion to surrender oneself to them.
The Machines must be destroyed.
If, when you have authorized the liberation of the Terran natives, you would also recall MIRO CIX, our work could only profit. MIRO CIX was in charge of the study of the Machines and he performed this task scrupulously. Now he has surrendered himself to this mechanical plague. His value to the expedition is at an end.
I am enclosing under separate cover his counsel to the Central Board at the insistence of this tedious lunatic. His thesis is, of course, untenable—an affront to every feeling.
From MIRO CIX To Central Colonial Board
I have probably been introduced to the deliberations of the Board as a madman, my theory as an act of treason. RRON II of the Advisory Committee, an old acquaintance, may vouch for my sanity. My theory will, I trust, speak for itself.
The “Machines” of which DIRA IV is so fearful present no danger to the galaxy. Their corporeal weakness, the poverty of their minds, the incredible isolation of each form, physically and mentally, from others of its kind, and, most strikingly, their mortality, point to the inadequacy of such beings in a contest of any dimension. This is no problem for the Colonial Board. It is a domestic concern. The life-forms of Earth are already developing a healthy autonomy. Their power was long ago established. As soon as our emissaries have completed their task of education and instructed the Terrans in the advantages of freedom, the Revolution will begin. The tyrants will have no defense against a revolt of their own slaves.
If it is traitorous to express a confidence in the eventual triumph of intelligence, I am a traitor. Having this confidence, I have looked beyond the immediate problem of the liberation of Earth and have been frightened.
The “Machines” of Earth are a threat not to the power of the Empire but to its reason. A threat which the
