Chapter III

Within, the monkey-like robot waited, weapons gleaming in its
finely fashioned hands. A stranger was approaching--someone who
knew the Master--friend or foe, it knew not; yet something purely
intuitive spoke inside it, saying "Friend!"

Darkly red and ominous, the old pile seemed untenanted when first its bloody portico spread beneath his swiftly questing feet. Fantastic, ponderous arches topping offset, fluted columns; weirdly carven facades. An architect's nightmare; a surrealistic concept of a palace in Hades; but house ne'er seemed so welcoming to a lone man against a world.

Silence broken only by the faint, thin whisper of a rising wind sweeping red dust through the trellises about the time-scarred walls, indicative of a simoon in the offing.

Advancing to the great door, he rapped sharply, then tried the latch. To his surprise it yielded. Entering the vestibule, he opened his helmet to a revivifying blast of oxygen fresh from the automatic ozone transformers, and called. The echo of his voice alone came back.

He found the library dustless and orderly. Trophies hung on the walls: mounted heads and bodies of creatures slain beneath alien suns, ghastly travesties on solarian mammals, creatures envisioned in dreams. Weapons from the far places, taken (as the labels read) at the siege of Kackijakaala in Alpha Centauri, six years distant by the fastest stellatomic.

How old, then, was Del Andres the magnificent? Man's allotted span, increased by the elimination of all disease, covers but a hundred and fifty years; yet Andres had seen and fought those years away within the vast systems of Centauri and Lalande, and he seemed still a young man, by appearance no older than Frederix's thirty years.

Aye, there were mysteries about Del Andres--rumors about a Vron princess far across space, years ago as time runs.

Intuitively Frederix moved to luxurious draperies hanging on the walls, moved them aside and a sigh came from his parted lips. The sheer, glorious, breath-taking beauty of the picture revealed stunned him! Third-dimensional it seemed, tinted with an ethereal loveliness, the supreme glory of womankind--

Haughtiness, perhaps, but the haughtiness that breeds the hope of conquest that would be rich, indeed, in its fulfillment.

He released the drapes and turned aside with a cry in his heart. Only now did he fully realize the fatalistic spirit which drove Del Andres: the devil-may-care fearlessness, the sheer recklessness, the constant hoping, perhaps, for death.

Small wonder that Hunter Frederix left that shrine and quested inward, saddened immeasurably by what he had seen and what he had so suddenly realized. For he had seen, in that moment, into the hidden recesses of a great man's soul.

The dining salle opened before him, seemingly converted into a species of _chambre-des-horreurs_ since robot parts were strewn all over the place: limbs, wires, sockets, photocells, small atomic motors. Robot control was a hobby of Andres--a robot of his making had, at Kackijakaala, entered and opened the gates of the fortress at which the Legion had hammered futilely for months on end in conquering the Dwares of Centauri and bringing peace and prosperity to the system's many races--prosperity and _the ultimate hope of cosmic conquest_!

He crossed the sill, started hurriedly towards a radio cabinet in the far corner. Simultaneously a door nearby fell silently open and what he saw caused, at first, a smile to flash across his bearded face.

Into the room came a tiny form, probably three feet tall, hairy and chubby like a Ganymedean monkey, its face a delicate pink, its large eyes an innocent baby-blue, dominating a pudgy simian face. A robot, no less--the robot about which Del had talked--whose comical aspect was not at all in keeping with the grim menace of a paralysis-pellet gun in one manual extremity and a disrupter in the other! Its thick lips parted and a reproduction of Andres' voice said:

"Don't move or I shall be forced to shoot. You will kindly remain as you are until Del Andres returns!" Whereupon the litany continued rapidly in Lalandean and Centaurian and abated.

Frederix stood frozen in his tracks, his smile gone now. He'd heard of automatic robots before, guarding bleak, desolate outposts in the still watches of extra-terrestrial nights whose weapons would be automatically discharged should anything change the visual pattern on their photocells during or after the warning.

The suspense was maddening. A radio transmitter and receiver stood scant feet away, and he dared not move to reach them--the means of calling Kaa, of sending angry ships swarming at Calidao, for perhaps (a _perhaps_ that was maddening in its import)--perhaps Onupari had not swept into the void with his cargo of death.

Andres had spoken of some intelligence manifest in the robot's actions. Might it then understand if he spoke to it?

"I am Hunter Frederix, Del Andres' friend," he said softly, scarcely moving his lips. The robot remained motionless, irresponsive. Was it merely the sparking of relays or had he described a gleam of something else in those mechanical eyes?

He talked on, explaining the entire situation. Abruptly, amazingly, the automaton sheathed its weapons.

Frederix turned towards the radio, astounded by what he had seen, striving to give the exhibition of understanding some explanation which did not admit of a created mentality; then, without, he heard the jetting of a landing gyrotomic.

* * * * *

A warm, excited cry cut the silence of the old mansion:

"Hunt! I thought you'd come here! Oh, I knew Dave was wrong!"

Del Andres rushed into the room, his dark face agleam, his strong arms outstretched in welcome greeting.

Frederix caught his hands, crushed them and said nothing.

"We captured a Vron, learned that they have sent an Armada--"

"I know," Frederix said simply.

"Oh, I knew they'd come!" Andres raced on. "I warned the Legion years ago; but they knew more than I who lived with the Vrons at Centauri, who--well, it doesn't matter! What matters is that I know them for what they are: cruel, domineering, the greatest actors in the universe; and when they want something--power or love or gold, it doesn't matter which for their fancies change in a moment--nothing will stop their mad rush towards that goal--" Suddenly he was staring into the shadowed room whence he had come and there was bitterness in his dark eyes--the bitterness of cruel and undimmed memories.

"But they must be stopped!" Frederix cried.

"We'll stop them!" whispered Andres, his strong, white teeth bared almost wolfishly. "The Legion can't get back in time; but we've worlds to defend, Hunt, and the courage to defend them. But why did Dave Cravens name you traitor?"

He could talk now. He could empty his bursting heart. Swiftly he recounted everything from those dangerous moments in Certagarni to the present.

"We'll win through!" Andres cried, his great hands strong and encouraging on Frederix's shoulders. "We'll get the Kaa ships to Calidao; we'll wireless Earth; we'll curb it now while it's not too late! Their armada is years away; much can be done ere it comes!

"Why, we've already downed the Certagarni squadron and reestablished control there and in Botrodus!"

That supreme confidence banished the hopeless resignation in Frederix's heart, buoyed him up and gave him newborn hope.

Andres was smiling, reaching into the young engineer's open helmet to grasp his golden beard in iron fingers, to tug at it playfully.

"Getting gray, fella! Must've happened when I shot you down!"

That broke the strain. They grinned boyishly at each other; then Del spun on his heel, walked to the radio cabinet, and simultaneously a carbon copy of his own voice cried in mockery:

"Don't move a muscle or I shall be forced to shoot."

He started to turn; the robot's unsheathed pellet gun coughed and Del toppled over against the transmitter, smashing the bared, delicate condensers into nothingness as he dropped into paralysis.

Frederix stood stunned. "No ... no ..." he murmured; and then he was leaping forward, tears of rage and futility in his eyes, to lift Del to a nearby couch, to call to him incoherently.

He looked then to the robot standing silently nearby. The curses on his lips were never uttered, for flooding into his mind came a strong feeling of sorrow, regret, and the automaton was extending the weapons to him grip foremost, as though their surrender might repair the damage done!

He tried to fight off the thoughts which thronged the threshold of his mind then. He tried to think of Del and of Onupari and his death cargo, of hellish death rushing across the light years towards Sol; but instead he could think only of the things Del had told him of creating this robot, powering it with a full gram of radium, releasing intelligence.

That there was intelligence here, he did no longer question. A reasoning intellect which had forbade slaying him and now had done this inexplicable thing. Or did it have complete control of the robot's form? Had it acted of its own accord or had the robot's relays automatically caused this dilemma? That final thought brought a counter-thought, a clear and sorrowing affirmation!

But how could he credit anything existing independent of a flesh and blood body as having intelligence? Must not every life form remain an insoluble psychophysical being?

And yet--is not the basis of all things electrical? Life and all that pertains to it and the universe? Why not, then, a pure, radioactive intelligence? Could it not have arisen by evolving degrees from the complexity of atomic fluctuations finding genesis in the pitted core of Pallas--where Andres, prospecting to pass empty days away, had found it--a sentient consciousness born in cosmic loneliness out of the very fabric of the universe? Had not One Other thus found genesis?

The weird new wonder of it strong within him, Frederix looked down at Andres, silent, immovable on the couch. A strange little smile played on sensitive, parted lips beneath the thin black mustache. Frederix wondered if he dreamed--

Spinning around to the radio, he discovered that to repair it would take hours. Yet he must call Kaa, summon the Service men, and depart in Del's ship for Calidao, on the slim chance that Onupari might still be there and that he might stay the take-off.

Atomics moaning above. He rushed to the window. Five ships V-ed into the south, magnificent against a dust-darkened sky, flashing swiftly out of sight under full power. Service ships, so near and yet so far!

Of course, the ship! Del's ship would have radio equipment. He rushed out on the impulse, his breath coming fast within his helmet.

Snapping on the transmitter, he called quickly into the microphone:

"Frederix calling KBM, Kaa. Calling KBM...."

QRM snapped through his receiver, born of those lowering skies over Botrodus, one of those rare but violent sandstorms come to disrupt radio communication.

Now a calm official voice answered, badly distorted by atmospheric disturbance:

"KBM to Frederix. What (brrrrrt) ... message?"

"Andres is paralyzed at the Rendezvous. Send a doctor. Send all available ships to Calidao--"

"Andres paralyzed.... Rendezvous.... Repeat ... mess ... can't...."

Frederix repeated grimly, persistently, but Kaa kept calling:

"KBM ... do not get ... repeat ... K ... rrrrrrrr...."

And then QRM blotted even that out.

* * * * *

Disgustedly he turned towards the port and the grim old mansion looming large in the cold, storm-born dusk, and hesitated. The message had gotten through. They at least knew Andres' condition and position; they would doubtless come plunging to the Rendezvous. He must leave a message!

Moments later he returned to the ship, a disrupter and a freshly-charged paralysis-pellet gun buckled at his waist. Before him scurried the automaton, its tragi-comic simian face turned back to him as if exhorting him to greater speed.

Gently, awesomely, almost reverently (for is not reverence born in recognition of the mighty and the mystic unknown which man cannot quite understand?), he handed the monkey-like thing into the cabin and followed.

Blasting off, he set a Mercator course, with all due corrections, for Calidao. Soon he outflew the fringes of the storm and then night fell like a finely-stitched widow's veil, the stars danced crazily as the air cooled, and he was alone in the darkness, roaring at full speed towards Calidao. Alone, aye, save for the weird little robot standing by his side, whatever life it possessed recording his every movement.

Gloom and hope held thrall in his soul. Things had seemed soluble with Andres smiling and pledging his support. Now he had weapons and a ship and a strong feeling that Onupari was still in Calidao, but--he was alone! Del was not here to help him. Still, he did have weapons. He might--

Aye, gloom was fighting a losing battle. A transcendental confidence was stirring his breast--and yet he wondered if it were not telepathic hypnosis finding genesis in the mind of the alien life which was close beside him? What were the limits of its intellect? What aid might it give? He did not dare to even wonder.