case, that will so modify the properties of space as to make it utterly
impossible to disintegrate matter into energy. There is some tendency
to fix energy as matter. I think that will be interesting to us in
the event that this war is successfully concluded. But at present we
are interested in the properties of the beam in that it will stop the
disintegration of matter. The process depends on the modification of
the properties of space. It is well known that in ordinary space, such
as we know, there are twenty coefficients of curvature. In ordinary
empty space, ten of these have zero values, and the ten principal
coefficients have certain non-zero values. This machine so affects
space that it makes all the coefficients of space have non-zero values,
and fixes these values to suit its own purposes. The results are
amazing. I have done some things with this machine that makes me truly
afraid. But we are interested in it because certain of the values we
can assign operate to force space to take such curvatures, that any
change of the condition of matter to condition of energy is impossible.
On release of the ray, the space returns to its normal curvature.
"Working out the theory of this machine has been a tremendous task.
Even the great calculating machine, the new integraph developed last
year, and it is a far cry from that first one that M.I.T. developed
in 1927, required many weeks of work to solve the problem in twenty
coefficients of space. In so doing at one stage we had to assume a
space of twenty dimensions in order that the correct values in the four
true dimensions might be determined.
"But there is still a great deal of work to be done. We must develop
practical machines of a range of many miles. There is no difficulty in
using the ray, since, as it is a condition of space, not a vibration,
it is impossible to stop it by any shield. There is only one way
to work with it, to create it directionally. We make the field by
projecting certain strains along a beam, then once started the field
follows that line to a distance dependent on the strength of the
generator.
"But this will require at least five days to get into working form. I
suggest that in the meantime Venus makes several million of the long
range Dis ray projectors, and distribute them all over the planet, to
be turned on from a central station, or by their own separate crews. I
have no doubt that the Sirians will attack that planet before we are
ready to attack them. Earth, too, must be prepared. But in the meantime
we can begin the work on the new de-activating field projectors, as I
call them."
Waterson was right. It was three days later that the Sirian fleet
left for Venus with a number of torpedo-ships so tremendous, it is
absolutely inconceivable. There were over two hundred million of the
ten-man machines! When they started to settle about Venus, the sky was
so filled with them that it was literally dark for many miles. They
attacked at Horacoles the System Capital, but the fields of the great
Dis rays were too much for them. Neither bombs nor Dis rays could
reach through. The air was dense, and filled with artificial smoke to
prevent the transmission of heat rays and great winds were created for
the purpose of carrying the heat away; but this was done automatically
by the expanding air before long. They could not attack the city. All
over the face of the planet were the great Dis ray emplacements. Great
ships hung even over the great rolling oceans, sending the blue rays of
ionized air up like some column that was to hold the Sirians from the
Planet. And they did.
But now again they began to slow down the planet--not gently as they
had had to before--but rapidly. The planet would have been pulled to
pieces, except that the very attractor beams that were pulling on it
tended to relieve the stress. But the cargo ships of Venus were pulling
to keep the planet in motion. It was a strange thing to contemplate!
Two mighty forces, one a fleet of two hundred million small ships,
the other a force of as many thousand huge freight carriers, having a
tug-o-war for a planet! But the odds were too great. Slowly the Sirians
won. The planet was steadily dropping toward the sun. Now it seemed no
fleet could come to aid them, and the Sirian fleet was being augmented
constantly by a steady stream of ships from Mars. It was the sixth
day after the announcement was made that Waterson had a fleet ready
to attack the Sirians. The Venerians also had a fleet ready, prepared
by the directions of Waterson's engineers sent by radio-television
and radiophone. They were ready to attack, and the Terrestrian fleet
arrived at Venus just six days after the announcement of the new weapon.
The practical projector of this new ray had been quite heavy, and they
had been mounted in groups of twenty projectors on special hundred-man
ships, using the same acceleration neutralizer used on the ten-man
ships. They were arranged to throw a wide beam, so wide that the new
ships with twenty, could prevent any action in a field of over two
hundred miles depth, and in a cone with a base of six hundred miles
diameter. The ships they had could approach within a hundred miles
of the Sirian fleet, without being seen, for they were painted black
therefore and showed no lights. In the darkness of the void they were
easily hidden.
* * * * *
The entire expedition went as planned. The radio barrage had not been
turned on, and they were in constant communication with the Venerians.
The two fleets were to attack simultaneously, over different areas, so
that between them they could wipe out so large a number of the enemy
ships that the fleet of two million could easily handle the task.
Hidden in the utter dark of the void they crept up on the Sirians.
They were in the sunlight, but the black coating kept them invisible,
while the Sirian ships shone brilliantly. Then at last the tip of the
great cone formation was within easy striking distance of the fleet.
There reached out the strange ray, and here in space it was utterly
invisible. But suddenly the ships within its range began to waver, to
fall together under mutual gravitation. With one swoop they all shot
toward the ships in space that had paralyzed them, for the attractor
beams had been turned on them. As the great mass of ships fell rapidly
toward them, long range Dis rays reached out, and they melted into
clouds of shimmering dust. Great swaths were cut through their ranks. A
similar scene was taking place far to the left of the Terrestrian fleet
where the Venerian fleet was working havoc among the invaders. Now the
last of the ships had been rayed into nothingness and a great fleet of
the Sirians were rushing forward to attack for the ships invisible on
account of their black line had been electrostatically located now. But
as the Sirians came within one hundred miles of the other fleets, the
ships all ceased to accelerate, to change direction; they just drifted
straight into that cone of Dis rays. All walls of the de-activating
field were lined with the ten-man ships, their shorter range Dis rays
prevented any Sirians from escaping. Bright lights shone out on the
Solarian fleet now--they wanted the Sirians to attack. The original
cone formation had shifted rapidly; now it was a double cone; then it
changed to a quadruple cone. There were six hundred of the de-activator
ships and these were arranged so that they shot their rays off in four
directions, making four cones of de-activated space, with the fleet of
de-activator ships at the apex. Thus they were protected on all sides,
and quickly, as the Sirian fleet spread out, more ships rose and there
were six cones branching out. In the center rested the main mass of the
fleet, the long range Dis ships, their attractors pointing out into
the cones to draw the disabled ships of the Sirians into the range
of their Dis rays, emanating in thousands from the ships lining the
sides of the de-activated cones of space. The fleet was invulnerable
and so sudden and complete was the failure of their power in these
de-activated regions, that they did not seem to have time to warn their
fellows. Many millions of the ships were lost before the wild charge
could be checked; then the six-cone formation entire began to move
slowly around; the Sirians, waiting to see what was to happen, were
caught before they were aware that they were in danger. Many, too, were
caught by the powerful attractor beams of the heavy ships within--drawn
in by the greater power of the heavy ship, till their power failed. But
at last the Sirians had learned the effective range of this new power
and tried hard to avoid it. The six-cone formation was immediately
broken up, and the six hundred de-activators went out individually,
each followed by a swarm of the ten-man ships to disintegrate the
ships caught in the de-activating cones. The Terrestrian ships were
marked by a blazing blue light, so that if they too were caught in the
de-activating field, they were not disintegrated. Only those around
them were, and they were then released, as the ray did not seem to have
any injurious effects on man, except to give him strange dreams. In
some way the brain was stimulated by the ray, as long as the ray was
used.
The de-activator ships were completely self-protecting; they could stop
any number of attackers from any direction, provided the paralyzed
ships were disintegrated as soon as caught, for if too many were piled
up, the tendency of the matter to disintegrate in the engines, plus the
natural tendency of the space to resume the normal curvature, caused
the ray to become ineffective as it was overpowered, and one ship was
lost in this way. Too many ships piled up, and only part of them could
be rayed out by the ship itself, and there were not a sufficient number
of helping ten-man ships. But the mighty fleet of the Sirians was
already beaten. They still outnumbered us ten to one, but they could
not fight this new force. They began a running fight to Mars, and now
the Solarians were united. Rapidly they wiped out the edges of the
fleet, and gradually worked in toward the center. But the Sirians could
not fight back--they could use only the explosive shells, and few of
them reached their goal. They were disintegrated, or missed. Not more
than three thousand men were lost in that entire engagement.
But now the Solarians tried a plan to capture the Sphere. A large
number of the ten-man ships dropped out of the main fleet, but not
enough to make it noticeable to the hard-pressed Sirians. These were
joined by one hundred of the de-activator ships. Then these, all
capable of higher speeds than the main fleet, set out at the highest
speed that could safely be maintained, and darted toward Mars.
Undetected they rushed past the Sirian fleet and passed on toward Mars.
They reached the planet fully three hours ahead of the main fleet.
By the time the main fleet had arrived, it came unattended, for the
last of the mighty fleet of two hundred million torpedo-ships had been
turned to impalpable dust, floating in space.
The advance guard arrived without warning, and as they had expected,
found the Sphere resting on the ground, protected by a great fleet
of the torpedo-ships. There were nearly a million ships there, with
the great machines rapidly making more. However, all were grouped
in an area that could be covered by the cone of the de-activating
beam. And out in space, the ship commanders decided on a plan. Fifty
of the de-activator fleet took positions high above the Sirians, and
the rest went with the entire fleet of the ten-man ships. These were
to approach the camp from the ground. Lying close to the ground, they
would be hard to see in the disappearing light. At a fixed moment,
all the ships above were to turn on their de-activator rays, which
would be plainly visible in the Martian atmosphere, while the ground
fleet of fifty de-activators were to use their rays from the side. The
ten-man ships were to form a circle around the camp at a safe distance
from the de-activator rays, for they would crash when their power
failed, if they were caught by the de-activator rays. But they wanted
to capture the sphere in good condition, so they arranged to have the
space directly above it unaffected by the de-activator field, lest some
torpedo fall on it and destroy it. This would leave an exit for the
torpedo-ships, except that at a point a mile or so above the Sphere, a
cross-ray made escape impossible.
The rays were turned on. Instantly the fleet of nearly a million
torpedo-ships fell wildly out of control, down through the blue glowing
air, in which great streamers of glowing red seemed to waver and twist.
Just outside the curtain of destruction waited the entire Solarian
fleet. Slowly they closed in till their Dis rays swept all the ships
within sixty miles of the edge out of existence; then rapidly the
de-activator beams were forced ever sharper and sharper, till at last
only the Sphere and a few hundred of the torpedo-ships, several hundred
of the torpedo-ship constructors, and the corresponding cargo ships and
worker machines were left. These had been saved for investigation by
the scientists, for they were helpless.
But the war was over now. The Sirians had been destroyed, or reduced to
mere museum pieces. Now the Scientists came to investigate the Sphere.
There was much we wanted to learn from the creatures of the Sphere. But
it was a strange story that the Sirian sphere had to tell.
* * * * *
Aeons ago there lived on a great planet of Sirius a race of intelligent
men, shaped as we are, but smaller due to the greater gravity of their
planet. And these men had developed a high civilization, a civilization
different from ours, in that they learned early about mechanics, but
chemistry and physics merely developed from the needs of the great
mechanical engineers. Electricity was used as a powerful aid in their
machines, and in their processes; it was a by-product, not an end.
Gradually their machines eliminated more and more of their work; they
became more and more complicated, but more and more trustworthy. Men
began to experiment with physics and found that their calculating
machines needed development. It was easy to add first one step, then
the next. More and more the machines could do. The mathematics became
more and more complicated, and the machines developed the equations,
found they could not handle them and passed them out as unfinished
results. Finally one man used the machines to calculate the design
of a machine that would be able to do these new equations. He built
it, but the calculations were wrong. The machine had correctly solved
his problem, but he had stated it wrong. It resulted in a machine
that would solve only simple problems, but it did something no other
machine had ever done. Given irrelevant data it would choose the
correct facts and solve the problem. It was a step, a short step toward
a machine that really thought.
Progress thereafter was rapid. The machines built machines, had been
doing it for decades in fact, but now they did one thing more--they
designed them. Now the problem could describe the type of machine
needed, and the worker machine would design it, and turn out the
completed machine! But these machines were rapidly perfecting the
beginning that man had made. Within a decade after that first discovery
of the principles of mechanical thought the machine was made that
could not only solve problems, but could also originate them. They had
developed a brain. It was a great machine, which occupied an entire
building, with its massive framework bolted down to the ground.
Man began a rapid decline, for the machines did all his work. With the
construction of a machine that could originate a problem, man made
a mistake. He had created a machine that was more powerful than he,
except that it was immobile. And this machine originated a new machine,
a machine that would release the energy of matter! It had developed
this because it had been able to see that such energy existed. Man's
machines could have solved it long ago, but the problem had never been
stated. Now came a machine that could state its own problems--and solve
them.
And with this new energy it designed a new brain-machine. A brain
machine such as no man's brain could conceive--a machine that could
move! For it was powered by the energy of matter, and could move as no
other machine had ever moved before--out into space!
Still the machines worked for the Sirian man, and he learned of the new
discovery, and began to design a new brain-machine.
Some of the Sirians realized the danger that was facing them, and
they had continued long researches on man's brain, and at last had
discovered the secret of giving a machine that emotion we call
devotion, loyalty, or gratitude. And they built a great machine on
that principle and used material energy to power it. It was a success.
It could think original thoughts. It pointed out the danger of the
existing machines--they were stronger than man. It was only man's
mobility and ability to control all mobile machines that had made him
superior, for a brain without a tool, or body is helpless. And now that
was lost. The existing brain-machines should be destroyed, and new ones
built, using the principles that it was designed on.
But the mischief was done. The new brain-machine, designed by a
machine, had done it. A machine had been built that was controlled by
thoughts, a machine that could be controlled by the machines. Each of
these machines was given a small brain, equipped with televisor sight
and hearing, and it was powered by material energy. They could run for
years without outside care, for the thinking machinery they had was
sufficient to keep them oiled, and to make them seek repairs when they
were damaged. They were susceptible to thought forces, and did as the
thought waves suggested and reported to the control brain exactly what
was going on about it.
And now this new brain developed a space-flyer to carry these machines,
and man could not help knowing, for its every thought was recorded,
for man's use. Then one day this record was found destroyed. The next
day the brain-machine had left the planet, and taken with it the new
space-flyer and the new telepathically controlled machines.
To the outermost planet of the System of Sirius the great machine fled.
For years it remained there waiting, thinking. Then at last it called
its worker machines into action. A new machine grew up from the stores
of metal that the space ship had brought with it, at last the metal
was used up, and the machine was not completed, so the space-flyer
was sacrificed for the completion of the machine. The new machine was
started. From its lip-like spout there poured a steady smooth stream of
molten metal, and the rock on which it rested was eaten away. The first
transmuting metal producer was made.
Decades passed, and only a small percentage of man developed. The
rest sank deeper and deeper into a life of ease. The planets were all
explored by the hardy ones, and no trace of the brain-machine was
ever found, for it had discovered the Dis ray, and sunk deep into the
ground, hollowing a great cave to live and work in.
* * * * *
But back on that planet, the scientists had developed machines that
surpassed it in power, and finally one of these picked up a thought
message from that distant machine that told its story. It was a thought
that had not been consciously radiated, only the marvelous sensitivity
of this new machine could have detected it, but now the men knew. It
was too late to do much to prevent it, for they had no weapons. But the
machine did. It was preparing to drive man from the planets, to rule
there in his stead, with a population of machines!
The scientists quickly built a great space-flyer, a gigantic machine of
over ten miles diameter, a huge sphere. And in that they established
laboratories, workshops, machines, and living quarters. They took
with them the finest men and women of their race, and sailed out into
space, taking an orbit about the sun of Sirius. They were comfortable
there in an equitable temperature, their ship lighted by the sun on
one side, and dark on the other, steadily revolving on its axis like
a miniature world. The foods of the people were chemically prepared,
for the brain-machines had taught them how. The air was repurified
constantly by machines that regulated the percentage of the gases to
the thousandth of one per cent. But the entire ship was painted black.
It could not be discovered floating there in space, so tiny in the
vastness of a system!
It was two weeks after they sailed that the machine-brain attacked. It
sailed out of its hiding place with thousands of great ships, armed
with Dis rays and with explosives, with heat rays and attractor beams.
The population of those worlds was wiped out in a week, and the rule of
the Metal Horde began.
The original brain built other brain-machines to direct its affairs on
other planets, and to do the work it did not wish to do itself.
For nearly a century those men lived in space, making swift forays on
a planet with a fleet of cargo ships, that revolved about the main
ship like satellites when they were not being used. In these trips
they would bring back tons of rock, and leave most of it stored in the
ships, dumping them into the reservoir of the parent ship when it was
needed.
Then a swift ship was developed. A ship that could start and stop more
quickly than any made before--a ship with acceleration neutralizers.
But the machine brains of the Metal Horde never learned the secret.
With a small fleet of these, the men drove an attack at the unprotected
main brain-machine. There were no men known to live in the system.
No other known machine could move without the knowledge of that main
machine, but these could. They too had the Dis ray now, and they
destroyed the main brain-machine. They were lost in the ensuing fight,
but that machine was destroyed.
All the remaining machines were equally powerful. Any one of them could
have built a brain-machine that could easily conquer the others--but it
too would have to bow to its creator. They fought it out. The men had
known this would be the result.
It was a war such as the system had never before seen. Each force was
equal, and could not ally itself with any other, for the machines could
not lie or state other than their thoughts, and each wanted supreme
power. They developed new weapons, weapons whose strength lay in their
number. One by one the machine brains had gone down to defeat, the
men of that ship helping to disturb the balance of forces by ever so
little, yet always enough to throw one side down to defeat, yet always
remaining in hiding. At last there remained but one machine-brain, and
its weakened force necessitated its return to the devastated planet.
With the destruction of the other brain-machines, the remaining
machines that they had previously controlled, automatically obeyed the
new master as perfectly as they did the old.
They returned to find a new fleet awaiting them. But it was not a vast
fleet such as they had encountered before. At once the torpedo-ship
machines settled to the ground and began turning out their weapons. But
it was all over before they could enter as an important factor. These
ships had a new weapon. It was a ball of glowing blue light that was
driven along a beam of some vibration, and as it touched any ship, the
ship instantly volatized so suddenly as to constitute an explosion. The
balls of light lasted about a minute and a half each, but were replaced
as quickly as they were used. When they were finally used, they would
die down to a dull red glow, then suddenly wink out. They could be
swept from one ship to another, taking toll of ten or twelve ships
each, and the beam that guided them could drive them with the speed of
light and supply an infinite acceleration. They were glowing balls of
concentrated energy of some sort, and as such could travel with the
speed of light.
But they were effective to the _nth_ degree. The entire fleet of that
one remaining brain-machine would have been lost, but it retired into
space, racing away at top speed, out into space, with the remaining
remnant of its great fleet.
And sixteen hundred years it had raced across space, to be destroyed
at last by another race of men. The battle was over, and the machine
awaited its destruction.
We rayed it out of existence. It was too great a menace to keep.
Some people still do not believe that those Sirians were truly
machines. They can not believe that a machine can have intelligence,
but certainly Waterson's calculating machine has intelligence of a
sort. And they ask, what would a machine want to exist for? It would
have no aim, nothing to perform. Why should it want to live, or exist?