“It will work now. But use care when you first try it. Now it makes all work, not a little as it did before.”
Slim inspected it. “That all? What about this pile of stuff you didn’t use?” “There was no need. It was very poor. Now it is good.” As best he could he explained to Slim what happened when it was used now; before, it would have taken a well-trained technician to describe, even with the complicated words at his command. But what was there now was the product of a science that had gone beyond the stumbling complications of first attempts. Something was to be done, and was done, as simply as possible. Slim’s only puzzle was that it hadn’t been done that way in the first place—a normal reaction, once the final simplification is reached. He nodded.
“Good. Fats, this is the business. You’ll get about 99.99 percent efficiency now, instead of the 20 percent maximum before. You’re all right, Lhin.”
Fats knew nothing of electronics, but it had sounded right as Lhin explained, and he made no comment. Instead, he headed for the control room. “Okay, we’ll leave here, then. So long, monkey.”
Slim gathered up the wire and handed it to Lhin, accompanying him to the air lock. On the ground, as the locks closed, the Moon man looked up and managed an Earth smile. “I shall open the doors above for you to go through. And you are paid, and all is fan:, not so? Then—so long, Slim. The Great Ones love you, that you have given my people back to me.”
“Adios,” Slim answered, and waved, just before the doors came shut. “Maybe we’ll be back sometime and see how you make out.”
Back in the cave, Lhin fondled the copper and waited for the sounds the rockets would make, filled with mixed emotions and uncertainties. The copper was pure ecstasy to him, but there were thoughts in Fats’ mind which were not all clear. Well, he had the copper for generations to come; what happened to his people now rested on the laps of the Great Ones.
He stood outside the entrance, watching the now-steady rocket blast upward and away, carrying with it the fate of his race. If they told of the radioactives, slavery and extinction. If they remained silent, perhaps a return to former greatness, and passage might be resumed to other planets, long deserted even at the height of their progress; but now planets bearing life and intelligence instead of mere jungles. Perhaps, in time, and with materials bought from other worlds with ancient knowledge, even a solution that would let them restore their world to its ancient glory, as they had dreamed before hopelessness and the dark wings of a race’s night had settled over them.
As he watched, the rocket spiraled directly above him, cutting the light off and on with a shadow like the beat of wings from the mists of antiquity, when winged life had filled the air of the moon. An omen, perhaps, those sable wings that reached up and passed through the roof as he released the slides, then went skimming out, leaving all clear behind. But whether a good omen or ill, he had not decided.
He carried the copper wire back to the nursery.
And on the ship, Slim watched Fats wiggle and try to think, and there was amusement on his face. “Well, was he good? As good as any human, perhaps?”
“Yeah. All right, better. I’ll admit anything you want. He’s as good as I am—maybe he’s better. That satisfy you?”
“No.” Slim was beating the iron while it was hot. “What about those radioactives?”
Fats threw more power into the tubes, and gasped as the new force behind the rockets pushed him back into his seat. He eased up gently, staring straight ahead. Finally he shrugged and turned back to Slim.
“Okay, you win. The monkey keeps his freedom and I keep my lip buttoned. Satisfied now?”
“Yeah.” Slim was more than satisfied. To him, also, things seemed an omen of the future, and proof that idealism was not altogether folly. Some day the wings of dark prejudice and contempt for others might lift from all Earth’s Empire, as they were lifting from Fats’ mind. Perhaps not in his time, but eventually; and intelligence, not race, would rule.
“Well satisfied, Fats,” he said. “And you don’t need to worry about losing too much. We’ll make all the money we can ever spend from the new principles of Lhin’s hookup; I’ve thought of a dozen applications already. What do you figure on doing with your share?” Fats grinned. “Be a damned fool. Help you start your propaganda again and; go around kissing Marshies and monkeys. Wonder what our little monkey’s thinking?” Lhin wasn’t thinking, then; he’d solved the riddle of the factors hi Fats’ mind, and he knew what the decision would be. Now he was making copper sulphate, and seeing dawn come up where night had been too long. There’s something beautiful about any dawn, and this was very lovely to him.
Into Thy Hands
Simon Ames was old, and his face was bitter as only that of a confirmed idealist can be. Now a queer mixture of emotions crossed it momentarily, as he watched the workmen begin pouring cement to fill the small opening of the domelike structure, but his eyes returned again to the barely visible robot within.
“The last Ames’ Model Ten,” he said ruefully to his son. “And even then I couldn’t put in full memory coils! Only the physical sciences here; biologicals hi the other male form, humanities in the female. I had to fall back on books and equipment to cover the rest. We’re already totally converted to soldier robots, and no more humanoid experiments…. Dan, is there no conceivable way war can be avoided?”
The young Rocket Force captain shrugged, and his mouth twitched unhappily. “None, Dad. They’ve fed thek people on the glories of carnage and loot so long they have to find some pretext to use their hordes of warrior robots.”
“Mmm… The stupid, blind idiots!” The old man shuddered. “Dan, it sounds like old wives’ fears, but this time it’s true; unless we somehow avoid or win this war quickly, there’ll be no one left to wage another. I’ve spent my life on robots; I know what they can do—and should never be made to do! Do you think I’d waste a fortune on these storehouses on a mere whim?”
“I’m not arguing, Dad. God knows, I feel the same!” Dan watched the workmen pour the last concrete, to leave no break in the twenty-foot thick walls. “Well, at least if anyone does survive, you’ve done all you can for them. Now it’s in the hands of God!”
Simon Ames nodded, but there was no satisfaction on his face as he turned back with his son. “All we could—and never enough! And God? I wouldn’t even know to pray for the survival of which of the three—science, life, or culture….” The words sighed into silence, and his eyes went back to the filled-in tunnel.
Behind them, the ugly dome hugged the ground while the rains of God and of man’s destruction washed over it. Snow covered it and melted, and other things built up that no summer sun could disperse, until the ground was level with its top. The forest crept forward, and the seasons flicked by in unchanging changes that pyramided decade upon century. Inside, the shining case of SA-10 waited immovably.
And at last the lightning struck, blasting through a tree, downward into the dome, to course through a cable, short-circuit a ruined timing switch, and spend itself on the ground below.
Above the robot, a cardinal burst into song, and he looked up, his stolid face somehow set in a look of wonder. For a moment, he listened, but the bird had flown away at the sight of his lumbering figure; With a tired little sigh, he went on, crashing through the brush of the forest until he came back near the entrance to his cave.
The sun was bright above, and he studied it thoughtfully; the word he knew, and even the complex carbon- chain atomic breakdown that went on within it. But he did not know how he knew, or why.
For a second longer he stood there silently, then opened his mouth for a long wailing cry. “Adam! Adam, come forth!” But there were doubts in the oft-repeated call now and the pose of his head as he waited. And again only the busy sounds of the forest came back to him.
“Or God? God, do You hear me?”
But the answer was the same. A field mouse slipped out from among the grass and a hawk soared over the woods. The wind rustled among the trees, but there was no sign from the Creator. With a lingering backward look, he turned slowly to the tunnel he had made and wriggled back down it into his cave.
Inside, light still came from a single unbroken bulb, and he let his eyes wander from the jagged breach in the thick wall across to where some ancient blast had tossed crumpled concrete against the opposite side. Between lay only ruin and dirt. Once, apparently, that half had been filled with books and films, but now there
