The Onslaught from Rigel

  CHAPTER XII

  The Poisoned Paradise

  To hide his surprise Sherman bent his head to examine the object theape-man had handed him. It was about the size of a baseball with littleholes in it. He inserted a finger in one of the holes, and a stream ofoil squirted out and struck him in the eye. His neighbor gave a cry ofannoyance at his clumsiness and reached through the bars to have theball returned. As he received it there came sudden flickerings of lightsalong the hall from somewhere high up, like the trails of blue and greenrockets. The mechanical ape-man dropped the oil-ball and dashed to thefront of his cell.

  Sherman saw a vehicle proceeding down the line of cells; a kind of truckthat rode on the track of the corridor and was so wide it just missedthe gratings. It had a long series of doors in its sides, and as it cameopposite an occupied cell, stopped. Something invisible happened; thebars of the cell opened inward and the inmate emerged to step into acompartment which at once closed behind him.

  When it stopped at the ape-man's cage Sherman watched the procedureclosely. A little arm appeared from beneath the door of the compartmentand did something to one of the lower bars of the cell. But the truckpassed Sherman by, moving silently along to other cells beyond him.

  He turned to examine the room more closely, and as he did so, saw that asecond truck was following the first. This one, with an exactly reversedprocedure, was returning robots to their cells. This second truckdropped an inmate in the cell at his right (another ape-man) andtrundled along down the line, but as it reached the end of the corridor,turned back and running along till it came to his cell, stopped, flungout the metal arm, and opened the bars in invitation.

  Sherman had no thought of disobeying; as long as he was in this queerestof all possible worlds, he thought, one might as well keep to the rules.But he was curious about the joint of the cage and how it unlocked andhe paused a moment to examine it. The machine before him buzzedimpatiently. He lingered. There came a sudden clang of metal from insidethe car, a vivid beam of blue light called his attention, and lookingup, he saw the word "EXIT" printed in letters of fire at the top of thecompartment.

  With a smile he stepped in. A soft light was turned on and he foundhimself in a tiny cubbyhole with just room for the single seat itprovided and on which he seated himself. There was no window.

  The machine carried him along smoothly for perhaps five minutes, stoppedand the door opened before him. He issued into another blue-domed hall.A small one this time, containing a rubber seat like that in his cell,but with an extended arm on which rested a complex apparatus of somekind. The seat faced a white screen like those in movie theaters.

  He seated himself and at once a series of words appeared in dark greenon the screen. "Dominance was not complete," it said. "Communication?"Then below, in smaller type, as though it were the body of a newspapercolumn. "Lassans service man. Flier writing information throughcommunication excellent. Dinner bed, book. No smoking. Yours verytruly."

  As he gazed in astonishment at this cryptic collection of words it waserased and its place was taken by a picture which he recognized as alikeness of himself in his present metallic state. A talking picture,which made a few remarks in the same incomprehensible gibberish theape-man had used, then sat down in a chair like that in which he nowrested, and proceeded to write on the widespread arm with a stylus whichwas attached to it. The screen went blank.... Evidently he was supposedto communicate something by writing.

  The stylus was a metal pencil, and the material of the arm, though notapparently metallic, must be, he argued from the fact that it seemed tohave electric connections attached. As he examined it, the blue lightsflickered at him impatiently. "The white knight," he wrote in a fit ofimpish perversity, "is climbing up the poker." Instantly the wordsflashed on the screen.

  Pause. "IS CLIMBING" declared the screen, in capitals; then below itappeared a fairly creditable picture of a knight in armor followed by anot very creditable picture of a poker. Sherman began to comprehend.Whoever it was behind this business had managed a correspondence courseof a sort in English, but had failed to learn the verbs and he wasbeing asked to explain.

  For answer he produced a crude drawing of a monkey climbing a stick anddemonstrated the action by getting up and going through the motions ofclimbing. Immediately the screen flashed a picture of the knight inarmor ascending the poker by the same means, but it had hardly appearedbefore it was wiped out to be replaced by a flickering of blue lightsand an angry buzz. His interlocutor had seen the absurdity of thesentence and was demanding a more serious approach to the problem. Foranswer Sherman wrote, "Where am I and who are you?"

  A longer pause. "Dominance not complete," said the screen. Then came thepicture of the first page of a child's ABC book with "A was an Archerwho shot at a frog" below the usual childish picture. Then came the word"think." With the best will in the world Sherman was puzzled toillustrate this idea, but by tapping his forehead and drawing a crudediagram of the brain as he remembered it from books, he managed to givesome satisfaction.

  * * * * *

  The process went on for three or four hours as nearly as Sherman couldjudge the time, ending with a flash of the word "Exit" in red from thescreen and a dimming of the blue-dome light. He turned toward the doorand found the car that had brought him, ready for the return journey. Asit rumbled back to his cell he ruminated on the fact that none of themen (or whatever it was) behind this place had yet made themselvesvisible, for it was incredible that beings of the type of the metallicape-man who occupied the next cell to his should have intelligenceenough to operate such obviously highly-developed machinery.

  But what next? He pondered the question as the car deposited him in hiscell. Obviously, he was being kept a prisoner. He didn't like it,however comfortable the imprisonment.

  The first thing that suggested itself was a closer inspection of hiscell. The lectern yielded an oil-ball like that the ape-man had givenhim and another, similar device, containing grease. There were varioustools of uncertain purpose and in the last drawer he examined a completeduplicate set of wrist and finger joints. The larger cupboard had deepdrawers, mostly empty, though one of them contained a number of books,apparently selected at random from a good-sized sized library--"Mysteryof Oldmixon Hall," "Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1903," "ThePoems of Jerusha G. White"--a depressing collection.

  This seemed to exhaust the possibilities of the cell and Sherman lookedabout for further amusement. His ape neighbor had pressed himself closeto the bars on that side, indicating his interest in what Sherman wasdoing by chuckling bubbles of amusement. Further down the line one ofthe ape-men was holding the pair of handles that projected from the wallbeside his cabinet. Sherman grasped his also; there was a pleasantlittle electric shock and in the center of the wall before him a slidemoved back to disclose a circle of melting light that changed color andform in pleasing variations. The sensation was enormously invigoratingand it struck the aviator with surprise that this must be the way thesecreatures.... "These creatures!" he thought, "I'm one of them...." theway these creatures acquired nourishment. The thought gave him aninspiration.

  "Hey!" he called in a voice loud enough to carry throughout the room."Is there anyone here that can understand what I'm saying?"

  There was a clank of metal as faces turned in his direction all down theline of cages. "Yes, I guess so," called a voice from about thirty feetaway. "What do you want to say?"

  Sherman felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He would not have believedit possible to be so delighted with a human voice. "Who's got us hereand why are they keeping us here?" he shouted back.

  A moment's silence. Then--"Near's I can make out it's a passel ofelephants and they've got us here to work."

  "What?" Sherman shouted back, not sure he had heard aright.

  "Work!" came the answer. "Make you punch the holes on these goddam lightmachines. It wears your fingers off and you have to screw new ones in atnight."

  "No,
I mean about the elephants."

  "That's what I said--elephants. They wear pants, and they're rightsmart, too."

  Insoluble mystery. "Who are you?" called the aviator.

  "Mellen. Harve Mellen. I had a farm right here where they set up thisopry house of theirs."

  Along the edge of Sherman's cell a blue light began to blink. He had anuncomfortable sensation of being watched. "Is there any way of gettingout of here?" he shouted to his unseen auditor.

  "Sssh," answered the other. "Them blue lights mean they want you to shutup. You'll get a paste in the eye with the yaller lights if you don't."

  So that was it! They were being held as the servants--slaves--of someunseen and powerful and very watchful intelligence. As for "elephantswith pants" they might resemble that and they might not; it was entirelypossible that the phrase represented merely a picturesque bit ofmetaphor on the part of the farmer.

  Why it must be an actual invasion of the earth, as in H. G. Wells' "Warof the Worlds," a book he had read in his youth. The comet could havebeen no comet then, and.... Yet the whole thing--this transformation ofhimself into a metal machine, the crash of the Roamer and his subsequentbath in the painful red light. It was all too fantastic--then heremembered that one does not feel pain in dreams....

  They were giving him books, food--if this electrical thing was indeedthe food his new body required--little to do; keeping him a prisoner ina kind of poisoned paradise.

  ... At all events the locks on these bars should offer no greatdifficulty to a competent mechanic. He set himself to a furtherexamination of the tools in the lectern.

  * * * * *

  The main difficulty in the way of any plan of escape lay in his completelack of both information and the means of obtaining it. The mechanicalape-men were hopeless; they merely babbled incoherent syllables andseemed incapable of fixing their attention on any object for as long asfive minutes. As for the New York farmer his cage was so far away thatthe conversation could be carried on only in shouts, and every shoutbrought a warning flicker of the blue lights. On the second day, out ofcuriosity, Sherman kept up the conversation after the blue lights wenton. A vivid stream of yellow light promptly issued from one corner ofthe cage, striking him fully in the eyes, and apparently it wasaccompanied by some kind of a force-ray for he found himself stretchedflat on the floor. After that he did not repeat the experiment.

  The next question was that of the lock on the cell-bars. The closestinspection he could give did not reveal the joints; they wereextraordinarily well fitted. On the other hand, he remembered that thearm of the truck had reached under one of the lower bars. Lying flat onhis back, Sherman pulled himself along from bar to bar, inspecting eachin turn. About mid-way along the front of the cell, he perceived a tinyorifice in the base of one bar--a mere pin-hole. Marvelling at thedelicacy of the adjustment which could use so tiny a hole as a lock hesat down to consider the question.

  He was completely naked and had nothing but the objects that had beenplaced in his cell by his jailers. However--

  Among the assortment of tools in his bureau was a curve-bladed knifewith the handle set parallel to the blade as though it were meant forchopping, and forming the wall of the same drawer was a strip of amaterial like emery cloth. After some experimenting he found afinger-hole which, when squeezed, caused this emery-cloth to revolve,giving a satisfactory abrasive.

  Thus armed with a tool and a means of keeping an edge on it, he took oneof the metal bands from the drawer that contained the duplicate set ofhands and set to work on it....

  Producing a needle that would penetrate the hole in the bars was all ofthree days' work, though he had no means of marking the time accurately.The metal band was pliable, light, and for all its pliability andlightness, incredibly hard. His tool would barely scratch it andrequired constant sharpenings. Moreover, he had little time to himself;his unseen scholar required constant lessons in English. But at last thetask was done. Choosing a moment when one of the cages at his side wasempty and the occupant of the other was busy over some silly sport ofhis own--tossing a ball from one hand to another--Sherman lay down onthe floor, found the opening and drove his needle home. Nothinghappened.

  He surveyed the result with disappointment. It was disheartening, afterso much labor to attain no result at all. But it occurred to him thatperhaps he had not learned the whole secret of the arm, and the nexttime the car came down the corridor for him, he was lying on the floor,carefully watching the opening.

  As he had originally surmised, a needle-like point was driven home. Buthe noted that on either side of the point the arm gripped the bartightly, pressing it upward.

  This presented another difficulty. He had only two hands; if one of themworked the needle he could grip the bar in only one place. But heremembered, fortunately, that his toes had showed a remarkable power ofprehension since the change that had made him into a machine.

  He finally succeeded in bracing himself in a curiously twisted attitudeand driving the needle home under the proper auspices. To his delightit worked--when the needle went in the bars opened in the proper place,swinging back into position automatically as the pressure was withdrawn.

  With a new sense of freedom Sherman turned to the next step. This wasobviously to find out more of the place in which he was confined and ofthe possibilities of escape. It seemed difficult.

  But even on this point he was not to be long without enlightenment. Hisunseen pupil in English was making most amazing progress. The whitescreen which was their means of communication now bore complicatedmessages about such subjects as what constituted philosophy. Shermanfelt himself in contact with an exceptionally keen and active mind,though one to which the simplest earthly ideas were unfamiliar. Therewere queer misapprehensions--for instance, no process of explanation hecould give seemed to make the unseen scholar understand the use andvalue of money, and they labored for a whole day over the words"president" and "political."

  In technical matters it was otherwise; Sherman had barely to express theidea before the screen made it evident that the auditor had grasped itswhole purport. When he wrote the word "atom" for instance, and tried togive a faint picture of the current theory of the atom, it was hardly asecond before the screen flashed up with a series of diagrams andmathematical formulae, picturing and explaining atoms of differenttypes.

  After four weeks or more (as nearly as Sherman could estimate it in thatnightless, sleepless place where time was an expression rather than areality) the car that came for him one day discharged him into a roomentirely different from the school-room. Like the school-room it wassmall, and some twenty feet across. Against the wall opposite the doorstood a huge machine, the connections of which seemed to go back throughthe wall. Its vast complex of pulleys, valves and rods, conveyed no hintof its purpose, even to his mechanically-trained mind.

  Across the front of it was a long, black board, four feet or more acrossand somewhat like the instrument board of an airplane in generalcharacter. At the top of this board was a band of ground glass, set offin divisions. Beneath this band a series of holes, each just largeenough to admit a finger, and each marked off by a character of somekind though in no language Sherman had ever seen.

  To complete the picture, one of the mechanical ape-men stood before theboard as though expecting him. On the ape-man's head was a tight-fittinghelmet, connecting with some part of the machine by a flexible tube. AsSherman entered the room the ape-man motioned him over to the board,pointed to the holes and in thick, but intelligible English, said"Watsch!" A flash of purple light appeared behind the first of theground-glass screens. The ape-man promptly thrust his finger into thefirst of the holes. The light went out, and the ape-man turned toSherman. "Do," he said. The light flashed on again, and Sherman, notunwilling to learn the purpose of the maneuver, did as his instructorhad done.

  He was rewarded by a tearing pain in the finger-tip and withdrew themember at once. Right at the end it had become slightly grey. Theape-man s
miled. Behind the second ground-glass a red light now appearedand the ape-man thrust his finger into another of the apertures,indicating that Sherman should imitate him. This time the aviator wasmore cautious, but as he delayed the light winked angrily. Again hereceived the jerk of pain in the finger-tip and withdrew it to findthat the grey spot had spread.

  He was rewarded by a tearing pain in his fingertip.Behind the ground glass a red light now appeared.]

  When the third light flashed on he refused to copy the motion of hisinstructor. The light blinked at him insistently. He placed both handsbehind his back and stepped away from the machine. The ape-man, lookingat him with something like panic, beckoned him forward again. Shermanshook his head; the ape-man threw back his head and emitted a long,piercing howl. Almost immediately the door slid back and the carappeared. As Sherman stepped to its threshold, instead of admitting him,it thrust forth a gigantic folding claw which gripped him firmly aroundthe waist and held him while a shaft of the painful yellow light wasthrown into his eyes; then tossed him back on the floor and slammed shutvengefully.

  Dazed by the light and the fall, Herbert Sherman rolled on the floor,thoughts of retaliation flashing through his head. But he was no fool,and before he had even picked himself up, he realized that his presentcast was hopeless. Gritting his teeth, he set himself to follow theape-man's instructions, looking him over carefully to recognize himagain in case--.

  The course of instruction was not particularly difficult to memorize. Itseemed that for each color of light behind the ground-glass panels onemust thrust a finger into a different one of the holes below; hold itthere in spite of the pain, till the colored light went out, and thenremove it. The process was very hard on the fingers, made of metalthough they were. What was it the farmer had shouted down the hall?"Wears your fingers out?" Well, it did that, all right. After an hour ortwo of it, when he had learned to perform the various operations withmechanical precision and the tip of his index finger had already begunto scale off, the ape-man smiled at him, waved approval and reachingdown beneath the black board, pulled out a drawer from which heextracted a finger-tip, made in the same metal as those he already bore,and proceeded to show Sherman how to attach it.

  As a mechanic, he watched the process with some interest. The "bone" ofthe finger, with its joint, screwed cunningly into the bone of the nextjoint below, the lower end of the screw being curiously cut away andhaving a tiny point of wire set in it. The muscular bands had loose endsthat merely tucked in, but so well were they fashioned, that once inposition, it was impossible to pull them out until the finger-tip hadbeen unscrewed.

  The instruction process over, he was returned to his cell, wonderingwhat was to happen next. The poisoned paradise was becoming less of aparadise. He speculated on the possibility of wrecking the car that borehim from place to place, but finally decided that it could not be donewithout some heavy tool and was hardly worth the trouble in any caseuntil he was more certain of getting away afterward.