Bennett placed his hands palms down on the desk. "Do you think you're
the only one who worries about an alien race who can build a machine
that we can't understand after ten years of investigation and study?"
* * * * *
The official transfer took place the following day, shortly after
breakfast. Bennett called a meeting of the six department heads and
announced that he would leave Titan on the next ship. It came as no
surprise.
"From here on, I'm just an interested observer," he said. "Dr. Lee is
in charge." He paused for a moment, then went on, "I thought this would
be a good time to review what's been going on most recently, and where
we stand."
Lee took an old pipe out of his jacket pocket and filled it while he
watched them try to decide who would talk first. The six department
heads all looked young and eager, he thought. Elaine was among them, of
course, as head of the archeology group.
After a bit of finger-pointing and head-shaking, Dr. Richards took
the floor. Head of the physics section, he had one of those open,
clear-eyed, crew-cut faces that would look young even after his hair
turned gray.
"It just so happens," he began, "that we finished a study yesterday
that may be of some slight significance." From the size of his grin,
Lee judged that the physicist was making a weak attempt to underplay
his speech.
Richards walked to the viewscreen at the far end of the room and turned
a dial. The screen flickered for a moment, then showed a chart.
"You remember from our last meeting," he said, "that our group finally
succeeded in reaching the generating unit that powers all the machinery
out there. Uh, Dr. Lee, this is something we've been working on for
more than a year. The power unit is buried in the sublevel of the main
building out there, and it's damned difficult to get to it without
tearing out other machines. We finally wormed a man down there about a
month ago."
* * * * *
Richards turned back to the rest of the group. "This chart shows what
we've been able to learn about the power unit. Which isn't much.
There's no input to it. No batteries, no solar cells, nothing. There's
a fuel tank--at least, we think it's a fuel tank--that's sunk inside a
cryogenic magnetic coil."
Elaine spoke up. "You told us that last time. Have you been able to get
into the tank?"
Richards shook his head. "Not unless we break up the coil, which we
don't dare try. It would probably mean destroying the power unit and
stopping all the machinery. And we can't do _that_ until we're certain
of what the machinery's doing."
"We all know that," said Dr. Kulaki, a wiry Polynesian who headed the
electronics group.
"Yes. Well, we did make a very elegant experiment," Richards continued,
"a variation of Cavendish's experiment to obtain the gravitational
constant, in the Eighteenth Century...."
"Spare the history," Dr. Kurtzman said, half-smiling.
"Okay, okay," Richards said. "We determined the mass of the fuel tank,
and therefore of the fuel in it. The tank contains a degenerate gas...."
"What?"
"A degenerate gas," Richards repeated. "The stuff must weigh several
tons per spoonful."
Dr. Petchkovich, the astronomer, frowned puzzledly. "Wait a minute.
Degenerate gases are found only in the cores of certain types of
stars ... are you saying that this magnetic field they've put around
the fuel tank is strong enough to create a pressure similar to the
weight of a star?"
"Take a look at the chart," Richards said, pointing to the viewscreen.
"If you know of any other type of substance with a density like that,
I'll eat it."
There was a brief conversation, then Dr. Bennett said, "All right, Pat.
Is that all?"
"Hell no," Richards said, his cat-like grin returning. "There's more."
He tapped a button on the viewscreen control panel, and another chart
came up on the screen.
* * * * *
"We know the power output of the generator. That was simply obtained,
since the one unit powers all the machinery in the buildings out there.
So we calculated all the known methods for obtaining power from a
degenerate gas, and checked them against the amount of fuel the system
has used up so far...."
Lee interrupted. "How do you know how much fuel has been used if you
can't get into the tank?"
Richards' grin broadened. "Oh, that's easy, Dr. Lee. We know how much a
degenerate gas should weigh, per unit volume. We know the size of the
tank, and therefore how much it can hold, when full. So we can estimate
how full the tank is simply by measuring its mass and comparing it to
the mass it would have if it were full."
"Doesn't the chemical composition of the gas have any effect on the
mass? Wouldn't uranium be heavier than hydrogen?"
"Yes, but not much. A factor of a hundred. You'll see in a minute that
it's not enough to matter at this stage of the game."
Lee nodded and the physicist went on. "Well, anyway, you can check
out our math in the report we'll issue later this month. But it turns
out that the only possible energy source for this gadget is total
annihilation of the gas particles into energy."
"Total annihilation? How?"
"That's a good question. I don't think we'll be able to answer it until
we can start taking the damned machine apart." He flicked a new graph
on the screen. "But, we can calculate how long the thing has been
running, on the basis of the fuel it's used up, and the energy rates
we've assumed...."
A slow wave of astonishment crept through the small room as, one by
one, they grasped the significance of the curving lines on the graph.
"That's right," Richards said. "Unless our rough calculations are
completely off the beam, which I doubt, the damned thing has been
operating continuously for something like ten-to-the-fifth or
ten-to-the-sixth Earth years."
A hundred thousand to a million years.
The rest of the meeting was quiet and orderly. They were all subdued
by Richards' report. _It's been running continuously for a million
years_, Lee kept thinking. _A million years._
He listened automatically as the other department heads made their
reports.
Ray Kurtzman was first. His report was actually a combined discussion
of the work that his engineering group, and Dr. Kulaki's electronics
people, had been jointly undertaking. They had tried to determine
(for the _n_th time) just what sort of power was being beamed by the
antennas atop the machine's towers. No luck. The machinery was using
power, the antennas were broadcasting _something_, but whatever it was
could not be detected by any instrument the Kurtzman and Kulaki had
applied to the problem.
Elaine gave a routine report on the latest digging expeditions that had
been sent out. No artifacts, no foundations, no remains of any sort.
Blank.
Dr. Childe, a short, sharp-voiced mathematician, gave his report on his
department's analysis of the wave patterns that were being sent out by
the antennas. The patterns had been deduced from the fluctuations in
energy consumption by the antenna equipment. Childe reported another
blank. The patterns were completely random.
"It's foolish to call them patterns at all," Childe complained. "They
look more like the ramblings of an idiot than anything produced by
intelligence."
* * * * *
Finally, Petchkovich reported on the latest astronomical studies. The
antennas were tracking an empty section of space between the Sun and
the planet Mercury. Careful observations had shown no noticeable effect
in the widespread area where the antennas were focused.
"It is my belief," he concluded, "that the antennas were originally
focused on one of the planets, but have since become disoriented in
some way, and are now well off-target."
Kurtzman huffed. "Not very likely. If they--whoever they are--could
make this whole damned set of buildings full of machinery to operate
continuously for a million years, do you think they'd slip up on where
the antennas are pointing?"
"If it's a million years we're talking about," Petchkovich answered
slowly, "then the chances for errors are simply that much greater."
Lee decided it was time for him to step in. "Have there been any other
attempts to date the buildings or the machines? Radioactive decay
rates, or something like that?"
Elaine nodded. "It's been tried at least once or twice a year, every
year. Nothing conclusive has ever been established. The buildings are
obviously very old ... but million years...."
They all lapsed into silence.
Lee took a deep breath and began once more. "This million-year-business
throws a new light on the whole subject. Up to now, I think, we've all
been looking at this machine on a day-to-day basis. I mean, we've been
examining what it's doing _now_. It might be worth our while to sit
back a little and try to extrapolate the behavior we've observed back
over a million years."
"Could you be a bit more explicit?" Richards asked.
"I'll try. It's mostly a matter of viewpoint, I think. Let's start
looking at this machine as something that's been in operation for a
million years. Let's admit to ourselves that what we see today is only
a very small slice of the whole picture. Dr. Petchkovich, you're an
astronomer; you're accustomed to studying a star for a few months and
coming up with a story that covers perhaps billions of years. Right?"
"Yes, but this is entirely different...."
"I know. I know," Lee said. "But the line of attack isn't so different.
For instance: Dr. Childe, suppose you send your wave patterns to the
Orbital Computation Center at Earth and have the Big Brain work them
over. Do you think it might come up with something useful?"
Childe shrugged elaborately. "Maybe. If we try to extrapolate the
sample patterns we have now over a million years, maybe something will
show up."
"It'll take months to get the Big Brain's time," Elaine said. "They're
waiting in line all the way back to Mars for it."
"What are months compared to the time we've already spent?" Bennett
countered.
"Or to a million years?" Lee added.
Kulaki suddenly started to bob up and down in his chair. "Say, we might
be on the track of something here," he said. "If those circuits have
been in continuous operation for a million years ... we could learn an
awful lot about reliability...."
Lee nodded in agreement. "We have a lot to learn, that's true enough."
He cleared his throat nervously. "There's one more thing, I am about
to publish a paper ... it's a sort of a general paper, but it has some
bearing on the work going on here. I wonder if you'd be good enough to
be a tryout audience for me?"
They sat back to listen.
* * * * *
Lee gave only the basic outline of his paper. He discussed his findings
among the ruins on Mars and on the lone planet circling the star Tau
Ceti; and he drew some conclusions from his investigations of the
primitive human cultures found on the planetary systems of Sirius and
Vega.
First, both Sirius and Vega have both been long known to be
comparatively young stars. Astrophysical evidence compiled from the
Twentieth Century onward, and finally geophysical data from the planets
themselves, showed that Sirius and Vega--and their planets--were
considerably less than a billion years old. By contrast, the Solar
System was known to be at least five billion years old.
Now, the development of life takes time. It took close to three billion
years for life to make its first appearance on Earth. Another two
billion years of evolution were necessary before man arose.
"If the planets circling Sirius and Vega are less than one billion
years old," Lee stated, "then the human populations of those
planets--no matter how primitive they are--_could not have originated
there_. They must have come from another planetary system. The closest
system that could have born life on its own is our Solar System."
Second, the ruins on Tau Ceti and on Mars were both definitely built
by human beings. The plans of the buildings, their furnishings and
utensils, the scant writings and pictures that survived--all were of
human origin.
"Although dating the time of destruction of these buildings is very
difficult," Lee went on, "we can definitely say two things: they were
destroyed suddenly in some immense cataclysm; and they were destroyed
at very nearly the same time, both on Mars and Tau Ceti. I hadn't
realized the correlation until this morning, but the destruction might
easily be dated at approximately one million years ago."
There was a stir of reaction at the mention of the time period.
Also, Lee told them, he had been able to partially translate one of the
folk tales of the Vegan people.
"Stripped of its nonessentials, it tells of a cataclysmic war between
the ancestors of the Vegan people and another race, mentioned only as
the Others."
He paused and looked at them, sitting around the table. They seemed
engrossed.
"The Vegan folk tales relate that the Others won an overwhelming
victory, and smashed forever their Golden Age, when they travelled
through the skies and lived in unbelievable splendor.
"I'd like to make one final point. The Vegan and Sirian peoples are
hardly human, by our standards. In addition to slight physiological
differences, they live in caves and eat shellfish and giant insects.
They do not hunt meat-bearing animals, simply because there are not
yet any meat-bearing animals on their planets. The humans on those
planets did not evolve there; they are a billion years ahead of the
natural evolution of their worlds."
Bennett spoke up. "In other words, they were originally a colony from
Earth."
"Exactly."
"That's a lot to swallow in one sitting," Patrick said, quietly.
"I know," Lee answered. "But it fits in with what we've found here.
Elaine, I'm certain that if you knew where to look, you could find on
Earth the remains of a human civilization that is more than a million
years old...."
She shook her head. "That's contrary to every known scrap of evidence
about early man. Besides, a million years of weathering would wipe out
almost anything on Earth. Wind, rain, Ice Ages, earthquakes ... it
would be impossible."
"What about the Moon?" Petchkovich asked. "There should be some
archeological evidence on the Moon that hasn't been completely
destroyed. Maybe buried under the dust or lava flows...."
"At any rate," Lee said, "I'm convinced that there was a human culture
a million years ago; that it expanded out through the Solar System and
to the stars; that it met an implacably hostile alien race; and that
the humans were utterly defeated. Nearly wiped out."
"And the machine out there?"
"It was built by the Others. It's alien. And hostile," Lee said.
"That's why we must find out what it's doing, and how."
* * * * *
You could feel the change in attitude throughout the center after that
conference. An invisible, but almost palpable wave of tension swept
through every office, every lab, every section of the underground
community. Not everyone believed Lee's theory about the Others.
But they could never look at those strange buildings again without
wondering. What had been a puzzling, frustrating riddle took on the
attributes of a living, intelligent enemy; an enemy that mocked their
efforts to understand, to control; an enemy that seemed in every way
superior to the feeble powers of the men from Earth.
* * * * *
A few days after that conference, Dr. Bennett left Titan for good. Lee
was in full command now.
He was just finishing a quick lunch at the robocafeteria when Elaine
walked by and stopped at his table.
"Hi boss. I'm on my way out to the buildings. Want to come along?"
Lee punched a button at the end of the table, and the dishes slid into
a wall receptacle. "No thanks," he said. "I've got some paperwork to
do...."
"Sid, you're going to have to come out and face it sooner or later. Why
don't you come now? There's practically nobody there."