"Step this way." Monkey-nimble, Tom-Tom hopped to the floor. He had
taken up the gun again, and gestured with it for Gascon to walk beside
him. Together they crossed the office to a rear corner, where Tom-Tom
touched what looked like a projecting nail head. As with the door to
Shannon's cell, a panel slid back. They passed into a corridor, and the
panel closed behind them.
"Straight ahead," came the voice of Tom-Tom in the darkness. "Being
mechanical, I have a head for mechanics. I devised all these secret
panels. Neat?"
"Dramatic," replied Gascon, who could be ironical himself. "Now,
Tom-Tom, if I do what you want, what happens to me and to Miss Cole?"
"You both stay with me."
"You won't let them ransom her?"
A chuckle, and: "I'll take the ransom money, but she's seen too much
to go free. Maybe I'll make the two of you a nice suite of rooms for
house-keeping--barred in, of course. Didn't you use to carry me around
in a little case, Gaspipe? I'll take just as good care of you, if you
do what I want."
The little monster did something or other to open a second door, and
beyond showed the light of a strong electric lamp. They passed into a
big windowless room, with rough wooden walls, probably a deep cellar.
It held a complicated arrangement of electrical machinery.
Hopping lightly to a bench the height of Gascon's shoulder, Tom-Tom
seized a switch and closed it. There were emissions of sparks, a stir
of wheels and belts, and the hum of machinery being set in motion.
"This, Gaspipe, is what brought me to life. And look!" The jointed
wooden hand flourished toward a corner. "There's the kind of thing
that was tried and failed."
It looked like a caricature of an armored knight--a tall, jointed,
gleaming thing, half again as big as a big man, with a head shaped like
a bucket. There were no features except two vacant eyes of quartz,
staring through the blank metal as through a mask. Gascon walked around
it, his doctor-mind and builder-hands immediately interested. The body
was but loosely pinned together, and he drew aside a plate, peering
into the works.
"The principle's wrong," he announced at once. "The fellow didn't
understand anatomical balance--"
"I knew it, I knew it!" cried Tom-Tom. "You can add the right touch,
Gaspipe. That's the specimen that came closest to success before me.
I'll help. After all, my brain was made by the old boy who did all
these things. Through it, I know what he knew."
"Why didn't you save him to help you?" demanded Gascon. He picked up a
pair of tapering pincers and a small wrench, and began to tinker.
"I told you about that once. I was angry. My first impulse was a
killing rage. The death of my life-giver was my first pleasure and
triumph. I hadn't dreamed up the plan I've been describing."
Anger was Tom-Tom's first emotion. Not so different from human beings
as the creature imagined, mused Gascon. What had the lecturer at
medical school once quoted from Emmanuel Kant:
"The outcry that is heard from a child just born was not the note of
lamentation, but of indignation and aroused wrath."
Of course, a new-born baby has not the strength to visit its rage on
mother or nurse or doctor, but a creature as organized and powerful in
body and mind as Tom-Tom--or as huge and overwhelming as this metal
giant he fiddled with--
Gascon decided to think such thoughts with the greatest stealth. If
Tom-Tom could divine them, something terrible was due to happen.
Stripping off his coat, he went to work on the robot with deadly
earnestness.
* * * * *
Morning had probably come to the outside world. Gascon, wan and weary,
stepped back and mopped his brow with a shirt sleeve. Tom-Tom spoke
from where he sat cross-legged on the bench beside the controls.
"Is he pretty much in shape, Gaspipe?"
"As much as you ever were, Tom-Tom. If you are right, and this machine
gave you life, it will give him life, too."
"I can't wait for my man Friday. Get him over and lay him on the slab."
The metal man was too heavy to lift, but Gascon's hours of work had
provided his joints with beautiful balance. An arm around the tanklike
waist was enough to support and guide. The weight shifted from one
big shovel-foot to the other and the massive bulk actually walked to
the table-like slab in the midst of the wheels and tubes, and Gascon
eased it down at full length. Now Tom-Tom approached, bringing a
spongy-looking object on a metal tray, an amorphous roundness that
sprouted copper wires in all directions. He slid it into the open top
of the robot's bucketlike head.
"That's a brain for Friday," explained Tom-Tom. "Not as complex as
mine, but made the same way. He'll have simple reactions and impulses.
A model servant."
_Simple reactions_--and Tom-Tom had sprung up from his birthcouch to
kill the man who brought him to life. Gascon's hands trembled ever so
slightly as he connected the brain wires to terminals that did duty as
nerves. Tom-Tom himself laid a plate over the orifice and stuck it down
with a soldering iron.
"My own brain's armored inside this wooden skull," he commented. "No
bullet or axe could reach it. And nobody can hurt the brain of Friday
here unless they get at him from above. He's pretty tall to get at
from above, eh, Gaspipe?"
"That's right," nodded Gascon, and in his mind rose a picture of the
big metal thing bending down, exposing that vulnerable soldered patch.
Tom-Tom and he clamped the leads to wrists, ankles and neck.
"Get back to the wall, Gaspipe," commanded Tom-Tom bleakly, and Gascon
obeyed. "Now watch. And don't move, or I'll set Friday on you when he
wakes up."
Gascon sat down on a long, low bench next to the open door. Tom-Tom
noticed his position, and lifted the gun he had carried into the
chamber.
"Don't try to run," he warned, "or I'll drill you--maybe in the
stomach. And you can lie there and die slowly. When you die there'll be
nobody to help Shanny yonder in her little hole in the wall."
"I won't run," promised Gascon. And Tom-Tom switched on more power.
Sparks, a shuddering roar, a quickening of all parts of the machine.
The shining hulk on the slab stirred and quivered, like a man troubled
by dreams. Tom-Tom gave a brief barking laugh of triumph, brought the
mechanism to a howling crescendo of sound and motion, then abruptly
shut it down to a murmur.
"Friday! Friday!" he called.
Slowly the metal giant sat up in its bonds.
The bucket-head, with its vacant eyes now gleaming as yellow as
Tom-Tom's, turned in that direction. Then, with unthinkable swiftness,
the big metal body heaved itself erect, ripping free of the clamps that
had been fastened upon it. Up rose two monstrous hands, like baseball
gloves of jointed iron. There was a clashing, heavy-footed charge.
Sitting still as death, Gascon again recalled to mind what Tom-Tom had
said, what he had heard at medical school.
Tom-Tom gave a prolonged yell, and threw up the gun to fire. The
explosions rattled and rolled in the narrow confinement of the room.
Bullets spattered the armor-plated breast of the oncoming giant. One
knocked away a gleaming eye. The towering thing did not falter in its
dash. Tom-Tom tried to spring down too late. The big hands flashed out,
and had him.
Gascon, now daring to move, dragged the bench across the doorway. From
a corner he caught up a heavy wrought-iron socket lever, as long as
a walking stick and nearly as thick as his wrist. All the while he
watched, over his shoulder, a battle that was not all one-sided.
After his final effort to command the newly animated giant, Tom-Tom had
not made a sound. He concentrated on freeing himself from the grip that
had fastened upon him. Both his wooden hands clutched a single finger,
strained against it. Gascon saw, almost as in a ridiculous dream, that
immense finger bending backward, backward, and tearing from its socket.
But the other fingers kept their hold. They laid Tom-Tom on the floor,
a great slab of a foot pinned him there. The two metal hands began to
pluck him to pieces, and to throw the pieces away.
First an arm in a plaid sleeve flew across the room--an arm ripped
from Tom-Tom's little sleeve, an arm that still writhed and wriggled,
its fingers opening and closing. It fell among the wheels that still
turned, jamming them. Sparks sprang up with a grating rattle. Then a
flame of blueness. Gascon turned his back toward the doorway that he
had blocked with the bench, to see the thing out.
With a wanton fury, the victorious ogre of metal had shredded Tom-Tom's
body, hurling the pieces in all directions. To one side, the machinery
was putting forth more flame and more. The blaze licked up the wall.
The giant straightened his body at last, holding in one paw the
detached head of its victim. The jaws of Tom-Tom snapped and moved, as
though he was trying to speak.
"Look this way!" roared Gascon at the top of his voice.
The creature heard him. Its head swiveled doorward. It stared with one
gleaming eye and one empty black socket. Gascon brandished the socket
lever over his head, as though in challenge, then turned and sprang
over the bench into the dark corridor.
A jangling din as the thing rushed after him. Hands shot out to clutch.
Its shins struck the bench violently, the feet lost their grip of the
floor, and the clumsy structure plunged forward and down, with a noise
like an automobile striking a stone wall. For a moment the huge head
was just at Gascon's knee.
He struck. The solder-fastened patch flew away under the impact of his
clubbed lever-bar like a driven golf ball. The cranium yawned open,
and he jabbed the bar in. Something squashed and yielded before his
prodding--the delicate artificial brain. Then the struggling shape at
his feet subsided. From one relaxing hand rolled something round--the
head of Tom-Tom.
It still lived, for the eyes rolled up to glare at Gascon, the jaws
snapped at his toe. He kicked the thing back through the door, into the
growing flames. The fire was bright enough to show him the way back
along the corridor. He did not know how Tom-Tom had arranged the panel
to open and close, nor did he pause to find out. Heavy blows of the bar
cleared him a way.
Out in the office, he fairly sprang to the desk, located the button on
its top, and pressed it. A moment later, Shannon was staring out at him
through her grating.
"Ben!" she gasped. "Are you all right? Tom-Tom--"
"He's finished," Gascon told her. "This whole business is finished."
With his lever he managed to rip the grating from its fastenings, and
then dragged Shannon forth. She clung to him like a child awakened
from a nightmare.
"Come, we're getting out."
In the second corridor he stooped, searched the pockets of the
senseless triangle-faced one and secured the keys to the car outside.
Then he shook the fellow back to semi-consciousness.
"This house is on fire!" Gascon shouted. "Get your pal upstairs on his
feet, and get out of here."
Leaving the fellow standing weakly, Gascon and Shannon got into the
open and into the car. Driving along the street, they heard the clang
of fire-engines, heading for the now angry fire.