The Invincible Read online

  Early the next morning, Rohan called the scientists to a meeting, explained the situation and told them he was counting on their help. Rohan had brought back a handful of the “metal insects” in his pocket. Nearly twenty-four hours had been spent examining the little “flies.” Horpach wanted to know whether it would be possible to render them harmless. And the question arose again: why had Rohan and Jarg been spared by the attacking cloud?

  The captives had a place of honor during these discussions: a closed glass container on the conference table. Only twenty specimens were left; the others had been destroyed during the scientific experiments. The strictly symmetrical tripartite structures resembled the letter Y. Three wings were anchored in a central thickening, each wing tapering to a point at its extremity. They looked coal black under direct illumination; but reflected light made them glisten bluish and olive green, not unlike the abdomens of certain terrestrial insects which are composed of tiny surfaces like the multifaceted rose-cut of a diamond. Their interior structure was always the same when examined under a microscope. These miniscule elements, one-hundredth the size of a small grain of sand, formed a kind of autonomous nervous system with a number of independent fibers.

  The smaller section, forming the arms of the letter Y, constituted a steering system controlling the “insect’s” locomotion. The micro-crystalline structure of the arms provided a type of universal accumulator and at the same time an energy transformer. Depending on the manner in which the micro-crystals were compressed, they either produced an electrical or magnetic field, or else produced changeable force fields that could raise the midsection’s temperature to a relatively high degree, thus causing the stored heat to flow in an outward direction. The resultant thrust of the air enabled the “insects” to ascend. The individual mini-crystals seemed to flutter rather than fly, and were incapable of steering an exact course—at least during the experiments conducted by the scientists in the laboratory. However, if they joined each other by chain-linking their wing tips, the ensuing aggregates possessed improved aerodynamic properties which increased proportionately with the number of links.

  Each crystal combined with three other crystals. In addition, its arm could link up with another crystal’s middle section. This permitted a multilayered structure of ever-larger systems. The individual crystals did not even need to touch directly. It sufficed for the wingtips to come into close proximity to bring about a magnetic field which kept the entire system in balance. When a given quantity of “insects” clumped together, the aggregate then displayed definite, observable behavior patterns. If the aggregate was subjected to external stimuli, it could change its direction, form, shape and the frequency of its internal impulses. Following such a change, the field would reverse its polarity, and as a result, the crystals no longer attracted but repelled each other and then broke down into their individual components.

  Besides this steering system, each black crystal contained another communicative system, or rather the fragment of what seemed to be a larger entity. This superordinate entity, which probably incorporated an enormous number of separate elements, was the real driving power regulating the actions of the cloud. At this point scientists were stumped. They knew nothing about the growth potential or the “mind” of these guiding systems. Kronotos assumed that the number of individual elements making up a larger entity was determined by the difficulty of the task they had to solve. This hypothesis sounded quite plausible, but neither the cyberneticists nor the information-theory experts knew of any comparable structure, that is any “brain” capable of proliferating at will, able to adjust its size to meet the extent of its goals.

  Some of the structures Rohan had brought along were damaged. Others, however, displayed typical reactions. The individual crystal could flutter about, ascend, and hover, nearly motionless, in the air; descend, approach a source of a stimulus or avoid it. Moreover, it was completely harmless; even when its existence was threatened—the research scientists tried to destroy individual crystals by chemical means, force fields, heat and radiation—it sent out no energy whatsoever to defend itself. It let itself be squashed like the most miserable bug on Earth, with one difference: the crystalline insect’s carapace was far more difficult to crack. However, the moment the “insects” combined into a relatively small aggregate and were then exposed to the action of a magnetic field, they produced a nullifying counterfield of their own. When subjected to heat they tried to combat it by giving off infrared radiation. Further experiments were not possible, since only a handful of crystals were at the scientists’ disposal.

  Speaking on behalf of the rest of his colleagues, Kronotos answered the astrogator’s question. The scientists requested time

  for additional examinations and requested larger quantities of crystals. To this end they suggested sending an expedition into the interior of the ravine in order to search for the lost men, and at the same time bring back, say, ten thousand pseudo-insects.

  Horpach agreed to this plan. But he was of the opinion that no more human lives should be endangered. He ordered a vehicle sent to the ravine, that had not participated in any maneuvers thus far: a special automated vehicle weighing eighty tons, normally deployed only under conditions of heavy radioactive contamination, high pressures and excessive temperatures. The vehicle, generally known as the Cyclops, was fastened down at the girders of the loading hatch, at the very bottom of the space cruiser. As a rule such machines were never put in action on planets, and until now the Invincible had never had to make use of its own Cyclops. In the history of the entire space fleet, the situations which had called for such extreme measures could be counted on the fingers of one hand. As far as the astronauts were concerned, dispatching the Cyclops for a mission meant charging the devil himself with a task; no one had ever heard of a Cyclops’ defeat.

  The vehicle was lifted out of the ship’s hold with the help of cranes. Then it was set down on the ramp where the technicians and programmers took charge of it. In addition to the usual system of Diracs for the production of the force field, the Cyclops was equipped with an antimatter projectile cannon, which enabled it to shoot off antiprotons simultaneously in any and all directions. An ejector directly built into the turret even made it possible for the Cyclops to rise several yards above the ground on the interference of the force fields. This rendered the machine independent of wheels and caterpillar tracks as well as the profile of the ground’s surface. The front section was equipped with an armored nozzle; a retractable inhaustor emerged from the opening. This telescopic hand could drill into soil, obtain core samples of minerals in its vicinity and perform necessary exploratory tasks. Although the Cyclops was outfitted with powerful radio and television transmitters, it was also capable of independent action thanks to the electronic brain that guided it. The technicians of engineer Petersen’s operational staff had fed the brain a prepared program, for the astrogator figured on losing contact with the Cyclops as soon as it entered the ravine.

  This program scheduled as its first task the roundup of the lost men. The Cyclops was to surround the men and itself with a secondary force field, concentric to its primary energy dome. Then under the protection of the outer perimeter it was to open an access route to its own inner shielding wall of energy. Once men and machine were safely protected, the Cyclops was instructed to bring back as large a number of the attacking crystals as it could gather up. Only in case of extreme emergency, if the force field were in danger of being crushed, was the machine permitted to resort to its antimatter cannon. The resultant annihilation would inevitably lead to nuclear contamination of the surrounding area. This would endanger the lives of the missing men who might be lingering near the battle zone.

  The Cyclops was about twenty-five feet high and proportionately wide: its casing was more than twelve feet in diameter. Should some cleft in the rocks prove to be too narrow to let it pass through freely, it could enlarge the opening by either using its steely telescopic hand or by crushing the obstacle with it
s force field and then sweeping aside the rubble. But even if the field were switched off, nothing could befall the Cyclops, for its ceramic vanadium-armored hull was as hard as a diamond.

  A robot had been installed in the interior in order to take care of the men once they were rescued. Even beds had been set up. After all installations had been checked, the armored colossus slid down the ramp effortlessly and passed through the openings in the energy dome which had been marked by blue lights. The gigantic machine seemed to be carried along by some invisible power. Even when driving at great speed, not the slightest cloud of dust was stirred. Soon the men, assembled at the Invincible’s tail end, could no longer see the Cyclops.

  Radio and television contact between the Cyclops and the command center functioned perfectly for nearly an hour. On the observation screens a tall obelisk, resembling a toppled-over church steeple, came into sight. It partially blocked Rohan’s view of the rock walls. Rohan recognized this as the entrance to the ravine where the attack had taken place. The Cyclops’ speed diminished somewhat while it rolled across the first talus which was covered with many large boulders. The men, watching the vehicle’s progress on the videoscreens in the command center, even heard the babbling brook which flowed hidden under the rocky debris—since the machine’s nuclear drive worked so quietly.

  The communication experts managed to maintain audio-visual contact until 2:40 P.M. By that time the Cyclops had driven across the flat, easily navigable part of the ravine and had arrived at the labyrinth of the rusty jungle. Thanks to the efforts of the radio operators, they succeeded in sending and receiving four further messages. But the fifth message was already so garbled that they had to guess at its meaning: the machine’s electronic brain informed them that the vehicle was proceeding satisfactorily.

  At that point Horpach acted according to plan and dispatched a flying probe equipped with a television relay system. The probe rose skyward at a steep angle and disappeared from view within a few seconds. Communication with the Invincible was maintained; the command center received the probe’s steady signals. The videoscreens projected the image of a picturesque landscape as seen from an altitude of 1700 feet; fissured rocks covered with rows of rusty red and black bushes. Several minutes later the observers spotted the Cyclops far below as it advanced steadily along the bottom of the gorge. The machine glistened like a fist of steel. Horpach, Rohan and the leaders of the specialists’ groups stood before the videoscreens in the command center. The reception was good, but they fully expected it to grow worse or even be disrupted. For this reason they had readied further probes to serve as relay stations. The chief engineer was firmly convinced that contact with the Cyclops would be interrupted in case of an attack; with the aid of probes, they would at least be able to observe the Cyclops’ operations.

  The men before the videoscreen, watched the wide-screen image carried by the high-flying eye of the teleprobe; the colossus was now only a few hundred yards away from the transporters that blocked the way inside the rock-gate; the electronic eye of the Cyclops could not see this. On its way back, upon completion of its tasks, the Cyclops was supposed to tow away two collided tanks locked tightly together.

  Seen from above, the two abandoned transporters looked like small greenish boxes. Near one of the vehicles the men could recognize a partially charred figure—the body of the man whom Rohan had hit with the Weyr gun.

  Directly in front of a bend in the road where the pillars rose, forming the rock-gate, the colossus came to a halt. There it approached a slope, overgrown by a wild tangle of metal bushes that reached almost to the bottom of the valley. The men watched the machine’s movements intently. It opened the force field out the front in order to send the inhaustor through the gap. The inhaustor protruded from its casing, like an elongated cannon barrel with a grappling hand at its end. It grabbed a few bunches of the metallic growths and pulled them, apparently effortlessly, out of the rocky ground. Then the vehicle retreated a short stretch, turned and crept backwards into the ravine.

  The entire operation had functioned smoothly. Radio contact with the Cyclops’ brain was reestablished with the help of the teleprobe hovering above the ravine. The colossus reported having stashed away inside a special container a generous specimen of teeming black “insects.”

  Now the Cyclops had approached the scene of the disaster within one hundred yards. There stood Rohan’s second energo-robot, its armored back leaning against the rock; the two interlocked transporters were stuck in the middle of the rocky passage; a short stretch ahead was the first energo-robot that had formed the column’s front. The softly trembling air indicated that the robot was still producing a force field, just as it had earlier when Rohan had left it behind after the catastrophe had befallen his group of men. First the Cyclops switched off the Diracs of the energo-robot via remote control. Then the giant revved up its motor, rose into the air and skillfully floated over the backs of the transporters, which jutted at a 45° angle. Hovering over the narrow defile, the Cyclops descended to the huge boulders. Then—more than thirty-five miles away from the ravine—one of the observers in the control room of the Invincible shouted a warning, just as the black pelt covering the slopes began to smoke and fall over the terrestrial vehicle in big waves, burying it instantly and completely, as if a mantle of pitch-like smoke had been thrown over it. An instant later a widely branched bolt of lightning flashed across the whole width of the attacking cloud. The Cyclops had not deployed its devilish weapon—the lightning was simply caused by the energy fields produced by the cloud itself, which clashed with the machine’s own force barrier. Suddenly, this dome-shaped barrier, to which a heavy layer of heaving blackness seemed to be glued, appeared to come alive. Now it swelled up like a gigantic lava bubble; now it contracted. This strange game went on for quite a while. The observers were under the impression that the hidden vehicle was trying to divide the myriads of attackers, which became more and more numerous, as ever new cloudy avalanches rolled down into the gorge. The luminous glow of the protective sphere could no longer be seen by the observers. Only the weird battle between two powerful inorganic forces continued in the dull silence. Finally one of the men in front of the videoscreen sighed: the twitching black bubble had disappeared into a dark funnel. The cloud had changed into a giant whirlpool which extended beyond the highest rocky peaks. The cloud’s lower end clawed into its invisible opponent while its top rotated like a mile-long maelstrom in wild bluish whirls. No one said a word, but the men knew that the cloud was trying to squash the vehicle trapped inside the bubble like a kernel in a shell.

  Rohan heard dimly as the astrogator questioned the chief engineer as to whether the Cyclops’ force field would hold out. But he said nothing; he could barely manage to open his mouth.

  The black whirlpool, the walls of the ravine, the black, bushy growths—all vanished in the fraction of a second. It looked as if a fire-spewing volcano had opened up at the bottom of the glen; a fountain of smoke, boiling lava, chunks of rock and, finally, a huge cloud, which dragged behind it a trail of vapor veils. The cloud raced higher and higher, until the steam—from the boiling waters of the little brook, perhaps—reached an altitude of one mile where the teleprobe was flying. The Cyclops had deployed its antimatter cannon.

  No one in the control center moved or uttered a sound. A sense of gloating satisfaction ran through the group. It did not really matter, nor did it lessen the intensity of their emotion, that this feeling had no rational foundation. Perhaps their pleasure stemmed from the subconscious impression that the cloud had finally met up with a worthy opponent. Ever since the start of the attack direct communication with the Cyclops had been cut off and the men could only see whatever was sent via the probe’s ultrashort wave rays across forty miles of vibrating atmosphere. Also the men working outside the control center had learned of the battle raging inside the ravine. That part of the crew which had been busy dismantling the aluminum barrack stopped working. The horizon over to the northeast grew b
right as day, as if another sun were rising, far mightier than the first sun which now stood high in the sky. Then the brilliant glow was blotted out by a pillar of smoke, which soon spread out into a giant dark mushroom cloud.

  The technicians in charge of watching over the probe had to remove it from the thick of the battle by making it ascend to a height of two and one-half miles. Thus it escaped the zone of violent airstreams caused by the constant explosions. Neither the rock walls, lining the sides of the ravine, nor the matted slopes, and not even the black cloud that had crept out of the brushy tangle were visible. Bubbling tongues of flame and wisps of smoke, criss-crossed by the parabolic trajectories of glowing debris, filled the videoscreens. The probe’s phonometer transmitted continuous rumbling thunder, sometimes weaker and sometimes stronger again, as if a considerable part of the continent were shaken by an earthquake.