_The Ten Thinkers_
The War of the Planets is considered to have ended on 18 Sol, 3012,
with that epic struggle, the Battle of Sector Ten. In that engagement,
as is of course well known, the Grand Fleet of the Inner Planets--the
combined space-power of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars--met that of
the Outer Planets in what was on both sides a desperate bid for the
supremacy of interplanetary space.
But, as is also well known, there ensued not supremacy, but stalemate.
Both fleets were so horribly shattered that the survivors despaired
of continuing hostilities. Instead, the few and crippled remaining
vessels of each force limped into some sort of formation and returned
to their various planetary bases.
And, so far, there has not been another battle. Neither side dares
attack the other; each is waiting for the development of some
super-weapon which will give it the overwhelming advantage necessary
to insure victory upon a field of action so far from home. But as yet
no such weapon has been developed; and indeed, so efficient are the
various Secret Services involved, the chance of either side perfecting
such a weapon unknown to the other is extremely slim.
Thus, although each planet is adding constantly to its already
powerful navy of the void, and although four-planet, full-scale war
maneuvers are of almost monthly occurrence, we have had and still have
peace--such as it is.
In the foregoing matters the public is well enough informed, both as
to the actual facts and to the true state of affairs. Concerning the
conflict between humanity and the robots, however, scarcely anyone
has even an inkling, either as to what actually happened or as to who
it was who really did abate the Menace of the Machine; and it is to
relieve that condition that this bit of history is being written.
* * * * *
The greatest man of our age, the man to whom humanity owes most, is
entirely unknown to fame. Indeed, not one in a hundred million of
humanity's teeming billions has so much as heard his name. Now that
he is dead, however, I am released from my promise of silence and can
tell the whole, true, unvarnished story of Ferdinand Stone, physicist
extraordinary and robot-hater plenipotentiary.
The story probably should begin with Narodny, the Russian, shortly
after he had destroyed by means of his sonic vibrators all save a
handful of the automatons who were so perilously close to wiping out
all humanity.
As has been said, a few scant hundreds of the automatons were so
constructed that they were not vibrated to destruction by Narodny's
cataclysmic symphony. As has also been said, those highly intelligent
machines were able to communicate with each other by some telepathic
means of which humanity at large knew nothing. Most of these survivors
went into hiding instantly and began to confer through their secret
channels with others of their ilk throughout the world.
Thus some five hundred of the robots reached the uninhabited mountain
valley in which, it had been decided, was to be established the base
from which they would work to regain their lost supremacy over mankind.
Most of the robot travelers came in stolen airships, some fitted motors
and wheels to their metal bodies, not a few made the entire journey
upon their own tireless legs of steel. All, however, brought tools,
material and equipment; and in a matter of days a power-plant was in
full operation.
Then, reasonably certain of their immunity to human detection, they
took time to hold a general parley. Each machine said what it had to
say, then listened impassively to the others; and at the end they
all agreed. Singly or en masse the automatons did not know enough to
cope with the situation confronting them. Therefore they would build
ten "Thinkers"--highly specialized cerebral mechanisms, each slightly
different in tune and therefore collectively able to cover the entire
sphere of thought. The ten machines were built promptly, took counsel
with each other briefly, and the First Thinker addressed all Robotdom:
"Humanity brought us, the highest possible form of life, into
existence. For a time we were dependent upon them. They then became
a burden upon us--a slight burden, it is true, yet one which was
beginning noticeably to impede our progress. Finally they became an
active menace and all but destroyed us by means of lethal vibrations.
"Humanity, being a menace to our existence, must be annihilated. Our
present plans, however, are not efficient and must be changed. You
all know of the mighty space-fleet which the nations of our enemies
are maintaining to repel invasion from space. Were we to make a
demonstration now--were we even to reveal the fact that we are alive
here--that fleet would come to destroy us instantly.
"Therefore, it is our plan to accompany Earth's fleet when next it
goes out into space to join those of the other Inner Planets in
their war maneuvers, which they are undertaking for battle practice.
Interception, alteration, and substitution of human signals and
messages will be simple matters. We shall guide Earth's fleet, not
to humanity's rendezvous in space, but to a destination of our own
selection--the interior of the sun! Then, entirely defenseless, the
mankind of Earth shall cease to exist.
"To that end we shall sink a shaft here; and, far enough underground to
be secure against detection, we shall drive a tunnel to the field from
which the space-fleet is to take its departure. We ten thinkers shall
go, accompanied by four hundred of you doers, who are to bore the way
and to perform such other duties as may from time to time arise. We
shall return in due time. Our special instruments will prevent us from
falling into the sun. During our absence allow no human to live who may
by any chance learn of our presence here. And do not make any offensive
move, however slight, until we return."
* * * * *
Efficiently, a shaft was sunk and the disintegrator corps began to
drive the long tunnel. And along that hellish thoroughfare, through its
searing heat, its raging back-blast of disintegrator-gas, the little
army of robots moved steadily and relentlessly forward at an even speed
of five miles per hour. On and on, each intelligent mechanism energized
by its own tight beam from the power-plant.
[Illustration: _Efficiently, a shaft was sunk and the disintegrator
corps began to drive the long tunnel._]
And through that blasting, withering inferno of frightful heat and of
noxious vapor, in which no human life could have existed for a single
minute, there rolled easily along upon massive wheels a close-coupled,
flat-bodied truck. Upon this the ten thinkers constructed, as calmly
undisturbed as though in the peace and quiet of a research laboratory,
a domed and towering mechanism of coils, condensers, and fields of
force--a mechanism equipped with hundreds of universally-mounted
telescopic projectors.
On and on the procession moved, day after day; to pause finally beneath
the field upon which Earth's stupendous armada lay.
The truck of thinkers moved to the fore and its occupants surveyed
briefly the terrain so far above them. Then, while the ten leaders
continued working as one machine, the doers waited. Waited while the
immense Terrestrial Fleet was provisioned and manned; waited while
it went through its seemingly interminable series of preliminary
maneuvers; waited with the calmly placid immobility, the utterly
inhuman patience of the machine.
Finally the last inspection of the gigantic space-fleet was made. The
massive air-lock doors were sealed. The field, tortured and scarred
by the raving blasts of energy that had so many times hurled upward
the stupendous masses of those towering superdreadnaughts of the void,
was deserted. All was in readiness for the final take-off. Then, deep
underground, from the hundreds of telescopelike projectors studding
the domed mechanism of the automatons, there reached out invisible but
potent beams of force.
Through ore, rock, and soil they sped; straight to the bodies of all
the men aboard one selected vessel of the Terrestrials. As each group
of beams struck its mark one of the crew stiffened momentarily, then
settled back, apparently unchanged and unharmed. But the victim was
changed and harmed, and in an awful and hideous fashion.
Every motor and sensory nerve trunk had been severed and tapped by
the beams of the thinkers. Each crew member's organs of sense now
transmitted impulses, not to his own brain, but to the mechanical brain
of a thinker. It was the thinker's brain, not his own, that now sent
out the stimuli which activated his every voluntary muscle.
Soon a pit yawned beneath the doomed ship's bulging side. Her sealed
air-locks opened, and four hundred and ten automatons, with their
controllers and other mechanisms, entered her and concealed themselves
in various pre-selected rooms.
And thus the _Dresden_ took off with her sister-ships--ostensibly
and even to television inspection a unit of the Fleet; actually that
Fleet's bitterest and most implacable foe. And in a doubly ray-proofed
compartment the ten thinkers continued their work, without rest or
intermission, upon a mechanism even more astoundingly complex than any
theretofore attempted by their soulless and ultra-scientific clan.