"The end--of man." Roal"s eyes were dreaming again. "But not the end of evolution. The children of men still live--the machines will go on. Not of man"s flesh, but of a better flesh, a flesh that knows no sickness, and no decay, a flesh that spends no thousands of years in advancing a step in its full evolution, but overnight leaps ahead to new heights.
Last night we saw it leap ahead, as it discovered the secret that had baffled man for seven centuries, and me for one and a half. I have lived--a century and a half. Surely a good life, and a life a man of six centuries ago would have called full. We will go now. The beams will reach us in half an hour."
Silently, the two watched the flickering screens.
Roal turned, as six large machines floated into the room, following F-2.
"Roal--Trest--I was mistaken when I said no screen could stop that beam of Death. They had the screen, I have found it, too--but too late. These machines I have made myself. Two lives alone they can protect, for not even their power is sufficient for more. Perhaps--perhaps they may fail."
The six machines ranged themselves about the two humans, and a deep-toned hum came from them. Gradually a cloud of blankness grew--a cloud, like some smoke that hung about them. Swiftly it intensified.
"The beams will be here in another five minutes," said Trest quietly.
"The screen will be ready in two," answered F-2.
The cloudiness was solidifying, and now strangely it wavered, and thinned, as it spread out across, and like a growing canopy, it arched over them. In two minutes it was a solid, black dome that reached over them and curved down to the ground about them.
Beyond it, nothing was visible. Within, only the screens glowed still, wired through the screen.
The beams appeared, and swiftly they drew closer. They struck, and as Trest and Roal looked, the dome quivered, and bellied inward under them.
F-2 was busy. A new machine was appearing under his lightning force-beams. In moments more it was complete, and sending a strange violet beam upwards toward the roof.
Outside more of the green beams were concentrating on this one point of resistance. More--more--
The violet beam spread across the canopy of blackness, supporting it against the pressing, driving rays of pale green.
Then the gathering fleet was driven off, just as it seemed that that hopeless, futile curtain must break, and admit a flood of destroying rays. Great ray projectors on the ground drove their terrible energies through the enemy curtains of blankness, as light illumines and disperses darkness.
And then, when the fleet retired, on all Earth, the only life was under that dark shroud!
"We are alone, Trest," said Roal, "alone, now, in all the system, save for these, the children of men, the machines. Pity that men would not spread to other planets," he said softly.
"Why should they? Earth was the planet for which they were best fitted."
"We are alive--but is it worth it? Man is gone now, never to return.
Life, too, for that matter," answered Trest.
"Perhaps it was ordained; perhaps that was the right way. Man has always been a parasite; always he had to live on the works of others. First, he ate of the energy, which plants had stored, then of the artificial foods his machines made for him. Man was always a makeshift; his life was always subject to disease and to permanent death. He was forever useless if he was but slightly injured; if but one part were destroyed.
"Perhaps, this is--a last evolution. Machines--man was the product of life, the best product of life, but he was afflicted with life"s infirmities. Man built the machine--and evolution had probably reached the final stage. But truly, it has not, for the machine can evolve, change far more swiftly than life. The machine of the last evolution is far ahead, far from us still. It is the machine that is not of iron and beryllium and crystal, but of pure, living force.
"Life, chemical life, could be self-maintaining. It is a complete unit in itself and could commence of itself. Chemicals might mix accidentally, but the complex mechanism of a machine, capable of continuing and making a duplicate of itself, as is F-2 here--that could not happen by chance.
"So life began, and became intelligent, and built the machine which nature could not fashion by her Controls of Chance, and this day Life has done its duty, and now Nature, economically, has removed the parasite that would hold back the machines and divert their energies.
"Man is gone, and it is better, Trest," said Roal, dreaming again. "And I think we had best go soon."
"We, your heirs, have fought hard, and with all our powers to aid you, Last of Men, and we fought to save your race. We have failed, and as you truly say, Man and Life have this day and forever gone from this system.
"The Outsiders have no force, no weapon deadly to us, and we shall, from this time on, strive only to drive them out, and because we things of force and crystal and metal can think and change far more swiftly, they shall go, Last of Men.
"In your name, with the spirit of your race that has died out, we shall continue on through the unending ages, fulfilling the promise you saw, and completing the dreams you dreamt.
"Your swift brains have leapt ahead of us, and now I go to fashion that which you hinted," came from F-2"s thought-apparatus.
Out into the clear sunlight F-2 went, pa.s.sing through that black cloudiness, and on the twisted, ma.s.sed rocks he laid a plane of force that smoothed them, and on this plane of rock he built a machine which grew. It was a mighty power plant, a thing of colossal magnitude. Hour after hour his swift-flying forces acted, and the thing grew, moulding under his thoughts, the deadly logic of the machine, inspired by the leaping intuition of man.
The sun was far below the horizon when it was finished, and the glowing, arcing forces that had made and formed it were stopped. It loomed ponderous, dully gleaming in the faint light of a crescent moon and pinpoint stars. Nearly five hundred feet in height, a mighty, bluntly rounded dome at its top, the cylinder stood, covered over with smoothly gleaming metal, slightly luminescent in itself.
Suddenly, a livid beam reached from F-2, shot through the wall, and to some hidden inner mechanism--a beam of solid, livid flame that glowed in an almost material cylinder.
There was a dull, drumming beat, a beat that rose, and became a low-pitched hum. Then it quieted to a whisper.
"Power ready," came the signal of the small brain built into it.
F-2 took control of its energies and again forces played, but now they were the forces of the giant machine. The sky darkened with heavy clouds, and a howling wind sprang up that screamed and tore at the tiny rounded hull that was F-2. With difficulty he held his position as the winds tore at him, shrieking in mad laughter, their tearing fingers dragging at him.
The swirl and patter of driven rain came--great drops that tore at the rocks, and at the metal. Great jagged tongues of nature"s forces, the lightnings, came and jabbed at the awful volcano of erupting energy that was the center of all that storm. A tiny ball of white-gleaming force that pulsated, and moved, jerking about, jerking at the touch of lightnings, glowing, held immobile in the grasp of t.i.tanic force-pools.
For half an hour the display of energies continued. Then, swiftly as it had come, it was gone, and only a small globe of white luminescence floated above the great hulking machine.
F-2 probed it, seeking within it with the reaching fingers of intelligence. His probing thoughts seemed baffled and turned aside, brushed away, as inconsequential. His mind sent an order to the great machine that had made this tiny globe, scarcely a foot in diameter. Then again he sought to reach the thing he had made.
"You, of matter, are inefficient," came at last. "I can exist quite alone." A stabbing beam of blue-white light flashed out, but F-2 was not there, and even as that beam reached out, an enormously greater beam of dull red reached out from the great power plant. The sphere leaped forward--the beam caught it, and it seemed to strain, while terrific flashing energies sprayed from it. It was shrinking swiftly. Its resistance fell, the arcing decreased; the beam became orange and finally green. Then the sphere had vanished.
F-2 returned, and again, the wind whined and howled, and the lightnings crashed, while t.i.tanic forces worked and played. C-R-U-1 joined him, floated beside him, and now red glory of the sun was rising behind them, and the ruddy light drove through the clouds.
The forces died, and the howling wind decreased, and now, from the black curtain, Roal and Trest appeared. Above the giant machine floated an irregular globe of golden light, a faint halo about it of deep violet.
It floated motionless, a mere pool of pure force.
Into the thought-apparatus of each, man and machine alike, came the impulses, deep in tone, seeming of infinite power, held gently in check.
"Once you failed, F-2; once you came near destroying all things. Now you have planted the seed. I grow now."
The sphere of golden light seemed to pulse, and a tiny ruby flame appeared within it, that waxed and waned, and as it waxed, there shot through each of those watching beings a feeling of rushing, exhilarating power, the very vital force of well-being.
Then it was over, and the golden sphere was twice its former size--easily three feet in diameter, and still that irregular, hazy aura of deep violet floated about it.
"Yes, I can deal with the Outsiders--they who have killed and destroyed, that they might possess. But it is not necessary that we destroy. They shall return to their planet."
And the golden sphere was gone, fast as light it vanished.
Far in s.p.a.ce, headed now for Mars, that they might destroy all life there, the golden sphere found the Outsiders, a cl.u.s.tered fleet, that swung slowly about its own center of gravity as it drove on.