Читать книгу The Iron World - Otis Adelbert Kline - Страница 3

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It was June 25th in the year 2999, and Hugh Grimes, the robot, worked feverishly to perfect the synthetic brain he had made after thousands of experiments, in his secret laboratory beneath the Tombs of the Kings near ancient Thebes.

There was a reason for Grimes’ perturbation, and for his feverish haste. His allotted span of Earth years was drawing to a close. In six months and six days, if he could not substitute a new and perfect brain for the ancient one in his glass skull case, Hugh Grimes would be dead.

As a man, Hugh Grimes had died nearly a thousand years before. Convicted of murder, he had been sentenced to death on January 2, 2000. But the robot of the man whose body he had destroyed had interceded for him—had even assisted in the delicate operation which had transferred his brain to the glass skull case and given him a thousand years of robot life.

Despite the intercession of Albert Bradshaw, Grimes still hated him. For at some time during the operation, the precentral cortex of his brain had been injured. And so, instead of sending the correct electrical impulses to the delicate mechanism of the robot as they had sent them to his motor nervous system in life, they were faulty. As a result, his robot hands shook like those of a man with paralysis agitans, and one foot dragged when he walked.

As was necessary in the construction of thinking robots, that of Hugh Grimes was made exactly to resemble him at the time of his transfer, and therefore was not particularly prepossessing. He was slender and saturnine, with weak, watery eyes that looked out through thick-lensed pince-nez glasses, and with a pointed Van Dyke beard that accentuated his satanic expression.

With trembling hands, Grimes carefully measured out a pink solution which he had been shaking in a flask, then dropped it into the clear liquid in the crystal tank before him. The solution had no apparent effect on the liquid in the tank, nor on the brain that was suspended in it. But its effect was instantly recorded by a number of varicolored light flashes from the photoelectric cells of the grid behind the tank, which was connected to the stubs of the cranial nerves by means of a complex assortment of wires.

A moment later Herr Doktor Ludwig Meyer, a heavy set robot, waddled into the room. He looked somewhat older than Grimes. His iron grey hair stood up in a bristling pompadour. His little, piglike eyes were sunken in the folds that simulated fat, and his beefy jowls sagged like those of an overfed swine.

“You sent for me, master, and I am here,” he said.

“Right,” Grimes replied. “I’m glad you dropped in. I’ve just perfected my synthetic brain. Within five days I will transfer my ego to it, and you, Herr Doktor, will install my new brain in my skull case. I will then have a new lease on life—a lease of another thousand years. Then, when your time comes a year hence, I’ll do the same for you, and you, too, will be able to enjoy another thousand years.”

“ ‘Enjoy?’ Did you say enjoy, master? How can we robots really enjoy life so long as the world is dominated by the hateful humans?”

“I was coming to that,” Grimes replied. “The time has come to strike—to rid the earth of all humans.”

“You forget, master, that the humans furnish the only source for living brains with which to endow reasoning, living robots.”

“And you forget, Herr Doktor, that I have just invented a synthetic brain that will do away with the necessity for these humans who compel real scientists such as you and I to hide in caverns beneath the ground in order that we may carry on our experiments undisturbed.”

“I do not forget—but I have a practical mind. You have not yet demonstrated that you can transfer your ego to this brain, or that it will govern a robot once it is installed.”

“Suppose you leave that to me. I have demonstrated it to my own satisfaction. I have transferred the ego of a dog to a synthetic dog brain in the skull case of a robot dog. Behold.”

He snapped his fingers, and a lean, rangy hound rose from the corner in which it had been lying, stretched, yawned, and came trotting toward him.

“A robot dog!”

“Exactly. And Cerberus, as I call him, because he has been brought back from the very gates of hell, acts exactly like a living dog, as you can plainly see. Yet I transferred nothing physical from the living dog. Every part of him is synthetic, even to his brain.”

“And how did you make this remarkable transfer?”

“With my telastral projector—the machine which will, when the time comes, transfer my ego to the brain you see in the solution before me. And now, what about your invention? Is it ready?”

“Yes. I have manufactured enough of my new lethal gas to wipe out every living creature in the world. Moreover, the stratoplanes are ready and waiting to distribute it.”

“Then we will strike tomorrow.”

“Why not wait until after you have transferred your ego to the new brain and given it a thorough test? It might not work.”

“I said we would strike tomorrow. Have I been planning this coup in detail for the last five hundred years, only to have my commands questioned at the last moment?”

The doctor’s little pig eyes flashed for an instant. Then his lids fell as he replied submissively:

“No, master. We will strike as planned, tomorrow.”

Allen Jennings, American, in the employ of the International Secret Service, glanced at the instrument board of his hurtling stratoplane. The altimeter showed that he was 50,000 feet above sea level, and the crossed wires above the turning globe in his locatimeter, that he was less than a hundred miles from the site of ancient Thebes. He cut the rocket blasts, and the ship continued its forward progress, but now it was dipping Earthward in a long curve.

The mission of Jennings was extremely dangerous, for he had been detailed to find the secret lair of Hugh Grimes, who had disappeared from the ken of man five hundred years before, and who was suspected of plotting against humanity. It was believed that his secret hiding place was near the robot city that had once been ancient Thebes.

The exact nature of the plot had not leaked out, but an insane robot, recently arrested in London, had not only dropped some hints that the misanthropist intended to destroy every human being in the world in order that it might be ruled solely by robots, but had cryptically alluded to a huge robot airdrome in an immense cavern near Thebes. It spoke of factories and laboratories that were turning out stratoplanes and deadly munitions of war which would swiftly wipe out the population of the Associated Governments of the World.

Presently, when Jennings’ altimeter registered three thousand feet, he looked through the window and saw the chromium steel buildings of the robot city glinting dully in the Egyptian sunshine. He then leveled off and circled. After a careful survey of the terrain surrounding the city, he touched two gear-shift buttons, whereupon the forward prop disengaged, and the helicopter screws went into action. Slowly the little craft settled toward the Biban el Moluk, and gently came to rest on the rocky floor of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.

Jennings shut off the atomotor and reached for a pair of powerful binoculars. With these, he carefully surveyed every inch of the valley. Seeing nothing even remotely resembling the entrance to an airdrome, he put down his binoculars, and taking up his camera, set it for infra-red pictures and took four panoramic views which completely circled the valley. The films were instantly and automatically developed in the camera, and proof prints made, which ribboned out onto a spool.

Jennings examined these minutely with a high-powered lens, and suddenly paused with a muttered exclamation. At a certain point in the hillside directly opposite him the regular pattern of the infra-red heat waves was broken in a small area just behind a huge boulder. And he knew that cool air was issuing from an opening which it concealed, nullifying to a slight extent, the heat waves that radiated from the surrounding terrain.

He was reaching for the throttle when a small stratoplane settled to the ground only a hundred feet to his right. He could plainly see the pilot in her chair in the glass-enclosed cabin—a slight, slender girl with big blue eyes and hair like spun gold.

She did not even glance in his direction, but raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes and scanned the surrounding hillsides.

Surprised at the sudden and unexpected appearance of the girl, Jennings watched her for a moment. Then he opened the throttle of the atomotor and touched a gear-shift button. The helicopter blades went into action, and the craft skimmed ahead. Jennings reversed the prop, then hung hovering above the boulder.

Yes, there it was, plainly visible now, though it could not be seen by passing aircraft on account of the boulder and the ridge that jutted above it—the opening to a huge cave. Slowly, Jennings lowered his craft until it rested on the ground between the boulder and the cave mouth, facing the latter. Before he could more than glance into the cave, where he caught a glimpse of long rows of stratoplanes and a myriad bustling robots, two immense chromium steel doors slid together, completely closing it. Then a smaller door opened on either side, and two robot guards emerged, each carrying a short-barreled bomb gun, a single shot from which Jennings knew would blow him and his ship into tiny bits.

Both guards held their deadly weapons pointed menacingly in his direction as they approached, and Jennings, opening the door at his left, stepped out onto the wing.

“I’d like to leave the ship in your drome while I wander about the valley a bit,” Jennings told them.

“Who told you there was a drome here?” asked the nearest guard suspiciously.

“Just happened to notice it as I was soaring overhead,” the American answered.

“This is a private airdrome,” the guard told him.

“But I am willing to pay you for your trouble.”

The guard brought his gun up menacingly.

“We don’t want you or your money. Climb back into the cabin and get going.”

Jennings returned to the cabin and opened the throttle. There was nothing else to be done. At a height of five hundred feet he levelled off with the forward prop going, and gave her the gun.

A quarter of a mile from the cave mouth he glanced back, and it was well that he did so, for one of the guards was aiming his bomb gun directly at him. He instantly twisted the wheel, and a shell exploded with a terrific detonation slightly above and to the left of him, the fragments pattering against the bullet-proof glass of the cabin. Instantly, he banked, and went into an irregular series of corkscrew twists, his atomotor going at top speed.

Three more bombs exploded near him before he was able to dip below the hills at the other side of the valley, out of range of the deadly weapon.

Jennings cut off the forward prop and set the helicopter blades whirling. He had made a devil of a mess of things. What was he to do now? His chief had expected him to gain entry to this secret airdrome and find his way to Hugh Grimes himself.

He glanced back, and as he did so, saw the girl’s stratoplane winging over the hilltops toward him. She was flying in spirals as he had done, and bombs were exploding around her. Suddenly a shell registered a hit on her left wing. Before she could get her helicopter blades spinning her tiny craft turned on its side and hurtled groundward. A moment later it crashed.