Ahead of Time Read online

  "Possibly. Hm-m-m." They watched the busy robot for awhile, learning nothing; and finally went back to Harnahan's office, where they had a drink, and speculated on what Thor was inventing. Van Damm thought it would be a mock-iron improvement. Harnahan didn't agree, but had no better ideas.

  Matters were not clarified when the teleview announced that there had been an explosion in the basement.

  "Atomic energy!" Harnahan gulped, rising from the couch in one jerky motion. Van Damm was at his heels as they sped toward the dropper. In the basement, a knot of men was gathered around the door to Thor's workshop.

  Harnahan pushed through them and stepped across the threshold into a cloud of concrete dust. As it cleared, he saw the disjointed remains of Thor at his feet. The robot was obviously beyond repair.

  "Funny!" Harnahan muttered. "That wasn't an especially severe explosion. If it wrecked Thor, it should have wrecked the plant—or the basement anyway. His duraloy's half melted."

  Van Damm didn't answer. Harnahan looked up to see the trouble-shooter staring into the clouds of dust at a gadget that hung in midair a few feet away.

  It was a gadget—just that. Harnahan recognized several of the parts that Thor had brought into his workshop. But the sum total was rather baffling. The device served no discernible purpose. It looked like the sort of toy an erratic child might construct with a mechano set.

  Roughly cylindrical, it was about two feet long, and a foot thick. There was a lens in it, and moving parts, and a helical coil. It buzzed.

  That was all.

  "Well," Harnahan said, "what in the name of Balaam's ass is it?"

  Van Damm carefully stepped back to the remains of the door. He barked hurried commands. Panels slid shut, and a man in blue uniform hurried to the trouble-shooter.

  "Blocked off, chief."

  "Yeah," Van Damm said. "Use the hypnotic treatment on these boys." He nodded toward the score or so of workmen, and there was a shuffling movement among them.

  "Requesting the reason, sir," someone called.

  Van Damm grinned at them. "Fair enough. You saw what was left of Thor. If it gets out that one of our indestructible robots can be destroyed, the other companies will get busy. Remember what happened with the old-style robots we made? They were sabotaged—that was why we developed the duraloy robot. It's the only practical kind. We'll just erase from your brains the realization that Thor was burned down. Then Luxingham or the others can't get hold of that info, even if they use scopolamine on you."

  Satisfied, the men filed out one by one. Harnahan was still looking blankly at the gadget.

  "No switches on the thing," he remarked. "Wonder what activates it?"

  "Thought, maybe," Van Damm said. "But be careful. We don't want to start it working till we know what it's for."

  "You're talking sense," Harnahan nodded, his face suddenly changing. "I'm only now beginning to realize the implications of this. Thor was supposedly indestructible."

  "Nothing is, completely."

  "I know. But duraloy—hm-m-m. Look at that lens. Could it be for the purpose of focusing some destructive ray that'd upset the atomic structure of alloys? No. What's left of Thor is still duraloy. It couldn't be that. Still—look out!" He dived out of the way as the gadget revolved slowly in midair.

  Van Damm ducked toward the door. "You've set it off! Let's get out of here!"

  He was too late. The gadget swooped over his head, removing a gray lock in transit, and banged against a metal barrier across the basement. Harnahan and Van Damm stood in the doorway of the robot's room and watched the device slowly eat its way through solid steel.

  Presently it vanished.

  Harnahan glanced at the teleview behind him. It was broken by the force of the blast. He shivered a little and said, "We'd better follow the thing. Do . . . do you suppose——" He stopped.

  Van Damm peered at him sharply. "Uh?"

  "Nothing. I guess. But . . . I'm wondering about mechanical mutation."

  "You're crazy as a robot," Van Damm said explicitly. "Mechanical fudge!"

  "Look, though. When life reaches a crucial point it mutates. That's a biological law. Suppose Thor created a robot greater than he ever was, and . . . and——"

  "That thing," said Van Damm, pointing to the hole in the wall, "is no robot, whatever else it may be. It's a machine. It isn't a thinking machine, either. But it's got power, plenty of that. Our business is to find out how that power should be applied." He hesitated. "Could we run a recording from Thor's brain?"

  Harnahan shook his head. "No soap. His brain's burned out. I checked that."

  "And robots don't leave notes. Well, it shouldn't be impossible to find out what that gadget does."

  "It burns holes through steel, anyway," Harnahan remarked.

  "And it stops watches," said Van Damm, glancing at his wrist timepiece. "We might try putting ourselves in the place of a robot and seeing what he'd invent."

  Harnahan glared at the trouble-shooter and hurried through a door in the metal barrier. There was no sign of the gadget beyond the threshold. A hole in the ceiling gave the answer.

  They went upstairs, and a hall teleview informed them that the gadget was in one of the machine shops, doing nothing. It was still doing nothing when Van Damm and Harnahan arrived. Fifty metal lathes were aligned in neat rows, and the workers were staring up at the floating gadget in a baffled fashion.

  The foreman approached. "What is it?" he wanted to know. "One of Luxingham's tricks? Bomb, maybe?"

  "What's it done?"

  "Nothing much. Only the lathes won't work."

  Van Damm seized a long, metal-tipped pole and approached the gadget. It floated slowly away. He maneuvered it into a corner and jabbed it with the pole, with no discernible result. The tone of the buzzing remained unaltered.

  "Try the lathes now," Harnahan suggested.

  They still didn't work. But the gadget, scenting new worlds to conquer, slid toward a door, burned its way through it, and disappeared.

  It was now outside the great building. From the porch that jutted out on the clifflike wall, Harnahan and Van Damm could look up and see the gadget levitating itself smoothly toward the sky. At a point far above them it disappeared, and shards of flexiglass tinkled down as they dodged in.

  "Up!" Harnahan said succinctly. "I've a hunch that was Twill's office."

  It was unnecessary to say more. Joseph Twill was one of the partners in the Company, a godlike being who dwelt in the rarefied atmosphere of the upper towers.

  Alarmed guards let them into Twill's offices. As Harnahan had feared, the worst had happened. The gadget sat cryptically on the big shot's desk, buzzing. Twill himself crouched limply in his chair, glaring at the device. About every three minutes he jerked, went white, and slowly recovered.

  Van Damm yanked out his pistol. "Get me an acetylene torch," he snapped, and advanced on the gadget. It slid toward Twill, and the trouble-shooter, circling swiftly, fired. He missed. The gadget rose, hesitated, and then bored down through desk, drawers, carpet, and floor, vanishing with a diminishing buzz.

  Twill mopped his face. "What was it?" he managed to ask. "Luxingham? I thought——"

  Van Damm looked at Harnahan, who gulped and explained. "We'll destroy it now, though," he finished. "A torch would melt it easily—it isn't duraloy."

  Twill had recovered some portion of his poise. "Hold on," he ordered as Harnahan turned toward the door. "Don't destroy it unless you have to. That might mean blowing up a diamond mine. The thing must be valuable, if only for a weapon."

  "Did it hurt you?" Van Damm wanted to know.

  "Not—exactly. My heart kept constricting—slowing down with a jolt, and then picking up again, regularly."

  "It didn't affect me that way," Harnahan said.

  "No? Well, if you've got to destroy it, all right. But don't do that unless it seems absolutely necessary. Thor was a smart robot. If we can find out the purpose of the thing——"

  Outside, Van Damm
and Harnahan looked at each other. Twill was absolutely right, of course. The gadget might be immensely valuable—if it were only possible to learn how. Its appearance was no clue. It had burned through metal, but a torch could do that, or thermite. Its subtle radiations had affected Twill's heart. That led up a blind alley. The gadget couldn't have been created solely in order to render Twill uncomfortable.

  It was uncontrolled, not uncontrollable. Yet only Thor had known the reason for building the gadget in the first place.

  "We can see what side products it has, and find out if the sum of the parts equals the whole," Harnahan said. "That would be one way of finding out what the whole is."

  Van Damm was fumbling with a hall teleview. "Wait a minute. I want to find out——" He spoke sharply into the mike. Presently he groaned with heartfelt misery.

  All the clocks in the plant had stopped. All the delicate instruments were out of kilter. According to the seismograph, a violent earthquake was in progress. According to the barometer, a typhoon was raging. And, to judge by the actions of the atom smasher, all matter was rather impossibly inert.

  "Planck," Harnahan said wildly, clutching at a futile straw. "Improbability factor. It reverses the laws of probability——"

  "Keep a grip on yourself," Van Damm advised. "You'll be counting your fingers next. We're dealing with cold, logical science. Once we find the key, it'll be as simple as

  pi."

  "But we don't know the possible scope of a robot's mind. It might have created anything—something far beyond our understanding."

  "The chances are it didn't," Van Damm said practically. "So far the gadget hasn't done anything impossible, in the light of present-day scientific knowledge——"

  The teleview chattered hysterically. All the men in Research B-14 had turned into skeletons, and then vanished completely. The gadget had been there, of course.

  "X rays," Van Damm said, a bit hoarsely. "I'm going to get that torch, just the same. I'll feel safer."

  By the time they had got hold of the weapon, they learned that the vanished men had reappeared, unharmed by their experience. Meantime, however, the gadget had visited Personnel, frightened a secretary into conniptions, blacked out the fluorescents, and removed the gravity of a huge safe so that it hung from the ceiling, amid crumbling shreds of smashed plastic.

  "Now it nullifies gravity," Harnahan said bitterly. "Just try co-integrating that into the pattern. So far we know this: the gadget nullifies gravity, makes people invisible, stops electric power, and gives Twill a heartache. All it spells to me is nihilism."

  "Definitely it's getting worse," Van Damm agreed. "We'll have to catch it before we can even turn the torch on the damn thing." He headed for a dropper, hesitated, and used the nearest teleview. The news was not encouraging. The gadget had got into the commissary and soured all the milk.

  "I'd like to let it loose in Luxingham," Harnahan said. "It'd wreck the joint—Lord knows it's trying to wreck us! If we only knew how it could be controlled!"

  "Telepathically," Van Damm suggested for the second time. "But we don't dare try it. Judging by what the gadget's done already, it'd blow the county into neutrons if we . . . ha! . . . controlled it."

  "Maybe only a robot can control it," Harnahan said, and snapped his fingers sharply, his face brightening, "Wait a bit! I've got an idea—Thor II!"

  "Eh?"

  "The second robot built on Thor's model. He's all ready to go—all finished, with a mental library installed. He just needs energizing. That's it, sure. We can't figure out what the gadget's for, but another robot like Thor could. It's perfectly logical, isn't it?"

  "Slightly too much so," Van Damm said hesitantly. "Suppose Thor II turns the gadget on us? It might be a device to make robots the supreme ruling species."

  "You're the one who's talking crazy now," Harnahan said. He used a teleview to issue orders, and turned away, grinning. Within fifteen minutes Thor II would be in working order, intelligent and ready to cope with any problem.

  That quarter of an hour, though, was an unpleasantly hectic one. The gadget, as though demoniacally inspired, tried to visit each separate branch of the gigantic plant. It changed a valuable shipment of gold ingots into dull, comparatively worthless lead. It neatly stripped the clothes from an important customer in the upper tower. It caused all the clocks to begin working again—backward. It revisited the wretched Twill, giving him another heart attack, and causing him to shine with a vague, purplish glow which did not wear off for more than a month thereafter.

  It was a goblin, a Puck, a will-o'-the-wisp. By the time the fifteen minutes had elapsed, the Company was in a greater furor than the last time Luxingham had sent bombers over the towers. Long-distance teleview lines hummed frantically. Twill screamed explanations and curses at his partners in New York and Chicago. Technicians and trouble-shooters collided with one another in the halls. A helicopter hovered above, ready to shoot down the gadget if it tried to escape. More than one member of the Company wished to Heaven it would try to do just that.

  Erratic, unpredictable, and nerve-jolting, the gadget sailed merrily on its way, actually doing very little harm except to upset the entire organization of the Company. Harnahan chewed his nails till Thor II was ready. Then he hastily collected the robot and took a dropper to join Van Damm and his torch on a lower level, where the gadget had last been seen.

  Van Damm sent a sharp glance at the robot's face. "He's conditioned and ready?"

  "Yeah," Harnahan nodded. "You know what we want. Thor II, don't you?"

  The robot said, "Yes. But without seeing the device, I cannot tell you its purpose."

  "Fair enough," Van Damm grunted, as a screaming blonde fled past him. "It's probably in this office."

  He led the way. The office, naturally enough, was deserted, but the gadget, buzzing faintly, hung in mid-air in the center of the room. Thor II moved past Harnahan and stood intently regarding the cryptic machine.

  "Is it alive?" Harnahan asked softly.

  "No."

  "Its purpose?"

  "Wait. To solve a problem—yes. I do not know if it will solve the problem for which it was created. There is only one way to tell."

  Thor II stepped forward. The gadget swung around so that the lens faced toward him. Some instinct warned Harnahan. He heard the buzzing grow in intensity, and simultaneously hurled himself at Van Damm. The two men crashed down behind the desk, the trouble-shooter's portable torch clattering heavily against the wall and falling painfully on Harnahan's legs.

  He scarcely felt it. Other things were happening. A lambent, pinkish ray fingered out from the gadget's lens and bathed Thor II. Coincidentally, the buzzing rose to a shrill, nerve-racking whine which did not last long. It ended in a blasting concussion that blinded and deafened the two men and knocked the desk on top of them.

  Harnahan coughed rackingly and mumbled something. Somewhat to his surprise, he was still alive. He got up in time to see Van Damm staggering forward, holding the torch, and playing a blazing flame toward the gadget, which made no attempt to escape. It glowed crimson—and then began to melt. Globules of copper and other metals dripped down on the floor. With a dull thump the gadget—what was left of it—dropped, harmless and insensate.

  Van Damm turned off the torch. The low buzzing had stopped.

  "Dangerous," he said, looking wildly toward Harnahan. "Got it just in time. You hurt?"

  "Just in time!" Harnahan said, pointing. "Look at that!"

  Van Damm looked. Thor II had suffered the fate of Thor I. A broken machine, he lay half melted near the door.

  Harnahan drew his arm across his cheek and looked at the blackened stain. He leaned on the desk and a slow grin grew on his face. Van Damm watched in amazement.

  "What the devil——"

  Harnahan was laughing almost hysterically. "It . . . it worked!" he managed to get out. "What a . . . what a shock for the Company! The gadget—worked!"

  Van Damm gripped the engineer's shoulders and sho
ok him. Harnahan sobered, though a wry smile still quirked his lips. "O.K.," he said at last. "I . . . I couldn't help it. It's so funny!"

  "What is?" the other demanded. "If you can see something funny about this——"

  Harnahan gulped. "It—well, it's a deadlock. Haven't you guessed yet what the gadget was for?"

  "Death ray of some sort?"

  "You missed the point of what Thor II said—that there was only one way to tell whether the gadget could do what it was intended to do."

  "Well? What was that?"

  Harnahan giggled feebly. "Logic—use logic. Remember the first robots we made? They were all sabotaged, so we built supposedly indestructible ones of duraloy. And the robots were made to solve problems—that was their reason for existence. Everything went along swell until those robots went crazy."

  "I know that," Van Damm said impatiently. "What's it got to do with the gadget?"

  "They went crazy," Harnahan said, "because they were faced with an insurmountable problem. That's elementary psychology. Thor I faced the same problem, but he solved it."

  Slow realization was dawning on Van Damm's face. "Indestructible—no!"

  "Sure! Sooner or later, all the duraloy robots thought of a perfectly obvious problem for them—how they themselves could be destroyed. We made 'em that way, so they'd more or less think for themselves. That was the only way to make them satisfactory thinking machines. The robots buried out in the cement faced the problem of their own destruction, couldn't solve it, and went crazy. Thor I was cleverer. He found the answer. But there was only one possible way to test it—on himself!"

  "But . . . Thor II—"

  "The same thing. He knew the gadget had worked on Thor I, but he didn't know whether it would work on him. Robots are coldly logical. They have no instinct of self-preservation. Thor II simply tried out the gadget to see if it would solve his problem." Harnahan swallowed. "It did."

  "What are we going to tell Twill?" Van Damm asked blankly.

  "What can we tell him? The truth—that we've run into a blind alley. The only usable robots we can make are duraloy thinking machines, and they'll destroy themselves as soon as they begin to wonder if they're really indestructible. Each one we make will need the ultimate proof—self-destruction. If we cut down their intelligence, they're useless. If we don't use duraloy, Luxingham or some other company will sabotage 'em. Robots are wonderful, sure; but they're born with suicidal tendencies. Van Damm, I very much fear we must tell Twill that the Company's run up a blind alley."