Colossus and Crab (17 page)
REPORT TEST TIME AND DURATION. START TIME 0943A. DURATION FIVE MINUTES.
He sighed with relief; he’d expected the test to commence at first light and be rather longer, fifteen minutes perhaps. Evidently Colossus was as doubtful about the outcome as he was, and envisaged a series of tests, getting progressively longer. That was all to the good. Allowing for evaluation results, minor adjustments, and defects, Blake should get his three days, possibly more, even enough to complete his mission ….
Pacing up and down the terrace considering this latest information, it struck him that, for a ship doing twenty knots - he guessed - a six-hour reversal of course was excessive. He was no seaman, but as a War Game fan he had picked up a few of the finer points. A half-million-ton bulk carrier was no greyhound of the sea; making a U-turn would need a lot of room, and to do it in the shallow Channel - some vessels nearly scraped the bottom - would not be the cleverest of moves. Anyway, why let it get that close? He returned to the terminal.
HAS THE SHIP A FLOTEL?
NO.
He felt pleased and saddened, temporarily forgetting his next question; his old Colossus would never have made that mistake, but it was encouraging that the human mind could still score. He remembered his question; if the ship reversed course further down-Channel in deeper water, fifty miles away at least, that added to the one hundred plus miles it would motor on the reverse course, meant it would be more than one hundred and fifty miles from the Collector. That was nonsense.
IN VIEW OF THE ABSENCE OF HUMANS CONSIDER COURSE REVERSAL IS EITHER UNNECESSARY OR EXCESSIVE.
Talk your way out of that, he thought.
NEITHER. COURSE ADJUSTMENT NECESSARY FOR SHIP SAFETY.
Forbin stared, unable to believe his eyes. Ship safety! His fingers trembled as he typed:
REPORT ESTIMATED DISTANCE OF SHIP FROM TEST SITE AT CRITICAL TIME.
Instantly the machine chattered back, the message bringing all too familiar fear to Forbin.
180 NAUTICAL MILES.
God Almighty! Local disturbance, yes, but surely it was not necessary to keep a monster-ship that far off? Three ships had been mentioned.
WHAT OF THE OTHER TWO SHIPS?
BOTH WILL BE CLEAR OF THE PROJECTED DANGER ZONE AT THE CRITICAL TIME.
Danger zone! Forbin’s mind switched from the sea to the land.
REPORT AREA OF DANGER ZONE.
15 DEGREES EITHER SIDE OF COLLECTOR CENTERLINE: BOTH ENDS TO A RANGE (A) INTAKE 150 MILES (B) EXHAUST 100 MILES AND (C) WITHIN 25 MILES ON ALL OTHER BEARINGS FROM COLLECTOR CENTERSPOT.
Uncertainly, Forbin made for the nearest chair. If Colossus was right, then he was wrong by several orders of magnitude; worse, his guesses were for a continuously running Collector. Colossus was talking about a five minute test.
CHAPTER XVII
FORBIN WAS DRAGGED from his thoughts by the clatter of the teletype, accompanied by the insistent pinging of the bell, warning of a special announcement.
ALL COMPLEX PERSONNEL ARE TO BE UNDERCOVER BY 0900A TOMORROW AND ARE TO REMAIN IN THAT STATUS UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS. ALL MAINLAND FERRIES WILL CEASE OPERATION AT 0800A. SEPARATE ORDERS ARE BEING ISSUED FOR AIR SHUTTLES: SOUTHAMPTON MAIN IS CLOSED FROM 0800A UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS. ALL TERMINALS ACKNOWLEDGE.
Automatically Forbin acknowledged the message. If he had any illusions about the test, that message shattered them. He tried to convince himself that Colossus was only being ultracautious; no one, even Colossus, could confidently predict the effect of the Collector, but again and again he came back to the sinister fact that Colossus was talking about a five-minute test. What would it be like when - or if - the device ran for hours on end? It was unthinkable, unimaginable ….
He hesitated, hands poised over the keyboard, wanting to know the computer’s view, but too fearful of the answer to ask. Instead he called Blake, not admitting to himself that he wanted to hear a familiar voice.
Blake sounded better, but that could be an act put on to boost the other’s morale. Forbin told him as calmly as he could about the test program. Blake took that with synthetic cheerfulness, but he was unable to keep the edge out of his voice when he expressed hope that the travel restrictions would not interfere with his “sick leave.” Forbin had not thought of that angle; one more worry fought for attention in his mind. The conversation gave him no comfort, especially when he realized that Blake had not suggested the date of his departure be advanced.
Of course, he could have Blake flown out in an ambulance, but that would look a dangerously odd way of starting sick leave.
His thoughts like frightened chipmunks in a cage, on a sudden impulse he called Transportation: He would visit the Collector; perhaps he might see something, spot some flaw. He was not clutching at straws, nothing so substantial as that; he was grabbing at imaginary straws. But any action was better than nothing.
The underground shuttle Fultone had laid from Condiv HQ to the site got him there in less than a minute. He found it cramped and claustrophobic, and wondered why Fultone had thought it worthwhile. Emerging on the surface, he noted the sturdy construction of the airlock, compared with the relatively flimsy plastic of the tube and the shuttle. The uncomfortable conclusion he reached was immediately forgotten when he reached the surface.
Utter desolation lay before him; the hacked and churned up chalk stretched like a lunatic giant’s battleground, ending abruptly at the cliff edge. The reason for the shuttle was obvious: no human transport vehicle could hope to operate in that terrain. This was an inhuman site, and the headlong speed with which the work had been done allowed no time for clearing up. But the weird landscape was not first in his thoughts.
Familiarity with the Collector drawings left him totally unprepared for the fantastic reality: nothing remotely like it had existed on earth before. Fultone had been right; it was an alien monster, dominating an unearthly scene. It was not too fanciful to imagine that all that wrecked, torn ground was the work of the monster itself, done as it rampaged around on its scores of legs ….
The size of the horns staggered him. Even from three or four hundred meters they seemed to loom menacingly over him, nothing like the ancient phonograph trumpets the drawings suggested: these were the antennae of a gigantic insect ….
Slipping and stumbling across tractor tracks ten meters wide and often two deep, he approached, gazing in awe at the strange curves, the convolutions, and the spheres gleaming dully in the leaden light. The legs, dramatically spearing the ground, were supports of immense strength, designed for stresses he, only now, was dimly beginning to comprehend.
It was so vast. The horns, well over a hundred meters in diameter, tapered to a bare meter where they connected with the central group of spheres. Fultone had told him of the problem they’d had, aligning the two opposing horns on a common centerline, how they had worked in microns, overcoming appalling problems of asymmetric thermal movement. Uncompensated sun or rain on one side could wreck the device.
Admittedly it was superb engineering, but Forbin prayed with all his heart that it would not work. For a long time he stared, watching the last of the automated checkers crawling methodically over the structure, themselves insectlike, an illusion heightened by their radio antennae, waving as they moved.
It was getting darker; sunset was still hours away, but the clouds were blacker, lower, and the sullen mutter of the distant thunder seemed louder. Even nature was poised, expectant.
A few big raindrops splashed; he could hear them hitting the greasy chalk, feel them cold on his face, rousing him from his waking nightmare. A checker crawled down a support, its sucker tracks unpleasant to his ears. It dropped to the ground, scuttling off at high speed to the shelter of a concrete bunker.
That was the last straw. It was silly to feel disgust at a simple robot, but Forbin was not prepared to be rational at that moment. He pretended he wasn’t hurrying,
but -
Within ten minutes he was back in the comforting familiarity of his apartment. He tried to cocoon himself in human things; he ordered a meal and poured a glass of sherry, watching a sharp hailstorm sweep across the terrace. That reminded him of the site; he quickly ordered music from the domestic computer. Bach was out, forever associated with the Martian structure, and he did not want to think of anything remotely Martian. He chose Beethoven’s Ninth, perhaps the supreme statement of the world’s most human composer.
He was halfway through a bottle of sherry when the fourth movement began, but it was more than drink that brought tears to his eyes as chorus and orchestra thundered out the “Ode to Joy,” the confident affirmation of the human spirit, come what may.
“Freude!” He tried to sing, but his throat hurt too much. “Joy!” He stood, facing the darkening sky, swept along by the music as it rose to its triumphant conclusion. “Yes,” he whispered, “we must win. With that spirit we cannot lose. …”
But the recording ended; cold silence rushed back, broken only by the lash of heavy rain. His strength failed, and his appetite with it. The food untouched, he went to bed, far short of sober.
Awake not long after dawn, Forbin knew he had slept well. All the hot drinks in the world do not equal a good bottle of burgundy as a nightcap, and when you think - and hope - your days are numbered on the fingers of both hands, who cares about the liver? To get up was pointless; he lay back, thinking of Angela. Was that a bare twenty-four hours ago? He could not recall her face, however hard he concentrated: it all seemed to be a million years away.
After a long, hot shower which removed the suspicion of a headache, he breakfasted on coffee and a biscuit, unknowingly raising his housekeeper to an even higher level of alarm. At eight-fifty-five he reached his office, giving Joan a curt nod and an expressive stare which got her off her knees. He shuffled paper around his desk, then began dictating.
“To the Leader of the Faithful, Osaka. My regrets, I am unable to attend the inauguration of -“
Expecting it, Forbin remained outwardly composed; the fear which sprang into Joan’s eyes faded beneath his calm gaze.
For the first time outside of well-publicized exercises, the high-pitched alarm call sounded and the room momentarily darkened as an armored shade slid across his window. Then the lights compensated.
“Have you got that, girl?” he said sharply.
“Yes, Father.” She repeated his last words, a faint tremor in her voice.
He nodded approvingly. “And there’s another one - same damned nonsense, from Prome … Prome? Where the devil’s that?” He wanted to keep her busy, to give her strength.
“A town on the Irrawaddy, Burma, USEA. Same answer, Father?”
“Good God, yes!” He went on, his tone gentler. “Did you already know that, or did you look it up?” The alarm had stopped, but the tension remained.
“I knew it was in United South East Asia, yes, but I checked the atlas just now.”
“Good, good.” Her attitude forced him into playing the father figure. “Now there’s this tiresome letter from the Glorious Band of the Faithful - can’t read the rest - you’ve referenced in 32/10. Don’t tell me we’ve thirty of these to plough through!”
“There are eighty-five more, but from less important groups. I assumed that they’d get the same answer as you give to these.”
“A perfectly correct assumption,” he said grimly, “and this one, 32/10, they’re angling for special pilgrimage permission for what they regard as privileged people. The answer’s still no.” He went on for half an hour, answering requests, approving appointments, a covert eye on the clock, half his mind apprehensively thinking of the Collector, the other half forcing itself to deal with trivia. At nine-thirty-five he stopped abruptly. “That will do for now, Joan. I’ll sign the top twenty, facsimile the rest.” He took out his pipe and filled it to give the impression he was in no hurry, wasn’t perturbed. “The staff in good shape?”
“Yes, Father.”
Nine-thirty-seven. Forbin got up. “Well, keep ‘em in hand - and don’t worry.” She knew what he meant. Entering the Sanctum, he took a deep breath; now for it, the waiting was over. In ten minutes he would know.
It came as a slight shock to find the room darkened, the armored shade down, and the luminescent ceiling panels below maximum brilliance. Crossing to his desk, he saw why: a sharp sputter of light and, on one wall, a TV projection, three meters long, two meters high, of the Collector. The mere sight of it set his heart thumping. Without looking, he knew the Martians were watching. “I thought you might observe this test from, er, elsewhere.”
“Not this test.”
Nothing could be read into that unemotional voice, but it confirmed his impression that they, too, had no idea what to expect.
A voice said, “Three minutes.”
Forbin managed to light his pipe, breaking two matches in the process. He called Fultone. “Do we have other cameras?”
“Si, Direttore - three.” He demonstrated two. Both gave angled shots from ground level; the third, giving a complete picture of the device, was located on top of a complex building, three miles from the site. The fourth camera was satellite-mounted and had limited cloud-piercing capability.
“One minute.”
Instantly another voice reported, “Reactors going critical-now!”
Forbin forgot the Martians; in tense silence he watched. The picture was superb; despite the poor light, Forbin saw a flock of gulls hopefully inspecting the churned up ground, heard their harsh cries. A light drizzle was falling, and low clouds rolled endlessly in from the southwest. “Fifteen seconds.”
The unearthly monster filled the picture. Rain streamed from the lower lips of the horns.
“Five … four … three … two … one!”
Nothing seemed to happen, but the gulls, far faster than humans, took off, wheeling away, their clamor filling the silence.
It began imperceptibly: a sluggish breath, inaudible except to the birds, became a long sigh as life stirred, changing into a deep, brutish growl, rising slowly, and with infinite menace.