The chief slouched farther back in his seat. He picked up a shard of rubidium that served as a paper weight and toyed with it.
“I guess you know most of the facts. They are made out of permallium. Have you ever seen any of the stuff?”
The new man shook his head. “I read about it though—some new alloy, isn’t it?”
“Plenty new. It’s the hardest stuff anybody has ever made. If you set off one hundred successive atom blasts over a lump of permallium, you might crystallize and scale maybe a micron off the surface. It will stand any temperature or pressure we can produce. That just means there’s no way to destroy it.”
Jordan nodded. He felt a little honored that the chief was giving him this explanation in person rather than just turning him over to one of the scientific personnel for a briefing. He did not understand that the old man was troubled and was talking the situation through as much for his own sake as for anyone else’s.
“That’s the problem,” the chief continued. “Essentially an indestructible machine with a built-in source of power that one can’t reach. It had to be built that way—a war instrument, you know.”
He stopped and looked squarely at the bright young man sitting across the desk. “This lousy war. You’d think the human race would grow up some time, wouldn’t you?” He filled a pipe with imported Earth tobacco and lit it, and took a few deep puffs. “There’s something else. I don’t know how they do it, but they can communicate with one another over long distances. That made them very useful for military purposes.
“They are loyal to one another, too. They try to protect each other and keep one another from being captured. Do you find that surprising?”
The question caught Jordan unprepared. “Well, yes. It is, kind of—” he said. “They are only machines.”
The chief closed his eyes for a moment. He seemed tired.
“Yes,” he repeated, “they are only machines. Anyway, we don’t know everything about them, even yet. There are still a few secret angles, I think. The men who could tell us are either dead or in hiding.
“There’s one fact though that gives us a great advantage. Their brain”—he stopped on the word and considered it— “I mean their thinking apparatus gives off a very penetrating short-wave length radiation which you can pick up on your meters anywhere in a radius of two thousand miles, and you can locate the source accurately if you get within fifty miles.
“The only real problem you’ll have in finding them is the confusion created by illegal atomic piles. You’d be surprised how many of them we have turned up recently. They are owned by private parties and are run illegally to keep from paying the tax on sources of power. You have to track those down, but once you get them labeled it will be clear sailing.”
He stopped to take a few puffs on his pipe.
“Don’t try to be a hero,” he said after a few moments. “Don’t get close to the thing you are hunting. None of them yet has injured any of us, but if one should want to, he could crush you to death with two fingers. Use the permallium nets and net bombs if you locate him.”
He tamped his pipe out. “Well, that’s it,” he said.
The new man arose. “I want you to know that I appreciate the trust you have put in me.”
“Sure, sure,” the chief said, but it was not unfriendly. “Do you like the job?”
“It is a great opportunity,” Jordan said, and he meant it.
“What do you think about what we do to them after we capture them?”
The new man shrugged. “I suppose it’s the only thing to do. It’s not as though they were human.”
“Yeah,” the chief said. “I guess so. Anyway, good luck.”
Jordan arose and shook the chief’s hand. However, just as he was stepping through the door, his superior asked him another question. “Did you know that one of them stutters?”
He turned back, puzzled. “Stutters? Why should he stutter? How could that be?”
The chief shook his head and started cleaning out his pipe.
“I don’t know for sure. You’d better get started.” He sat back in his seat and watched the back of the new man as he disappeared through the doorway.
That young fellow has a lot to learn, he thought to himself. But even so, maybe he’s better off than I am. Maybe I’ve had too much experience. Maybe too much experience puts you back where you started from. You’ve done the wrong thing so many times and profited so many times from your mistakes that you see errors and tragedies in everything.
He was depressed, and he did something that usually made him feel better again. He reached under the edge of his desk and pulled a little switch that made the galactic map on the wall light up in three-dimensional depth, then he swung around in his chair so he could see it. Eight thousand planets that his race had conquered, eight thousand planets hundreds of light-years apart. Looking at the map gave him a sense of accomplishment and pride in humanity which even a stupid war and its aftermath could not completely destroy.
Jon Hall, the fugitive, walked along the highway leading south from the rocket port. There was very little traffic, only an occasional delivery truck carrying meat or groceries. The real highway was half a mile overhead where the copters shuttled back and forth up and down the state in neat orderly layers.
The seventeen were inside his head, looking through his eyes, and feasting on the blueness of the sky, and the rich green vegetation that covered the fertile fields. From time to time they talked to him, giving advice, asking questions, or making comments, but mostly they looked, each knowing that the hours of their sight might be very few.
After walking a while, Hall became aware of someone’s footsteps behind him. He stopped suddenly in apprehension and swung around. A dozen or so paces away was a red-headed boy of about ten or eleven, dressed in plastic overalls, and carrying a basket of ripe raspberries. The stains about his mouth showed that not all the raspberries were carried in the basket.
Hall’s anxiety faded, and he was glad to see the child. He had hoped to meet someone who was not so old to become suspicious, but old enough to give him directions.
He waited for the lad to catch up.
“Hello,” the boy said. “I’ve been walking behind you most of a mile, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
“It looks as though you’ve been p-p-picking raspberries,” Hall said.
“Yup. My dad owns a patch by the river. Want some?” He proffered the basket.
“No, thank you,” Hall answered. He resumed his walk up the highway with the boy at his side.
“D-do you live around here?” he asked.
“Just up the road a ways.” The lad studied his companion for a minute. “You stutter, don’t you?”
“A little.”
“There was a boy in my class who used to stutter. The teacher said it was because he thought so far ahead of what he said he got all tangled up.” The boy reached in his basket for a handful of berries and chewed them thoughtfully. “She was always after him to talk slower, but I guess it didn’t do any good. He still stutters.”
“Is there a p-power plant around here?” Hall asked. “You know, where the electricity comes from.”
“You mean the place where they have the nu-nuclear fission”—the boy stumbled on the unfamiliar word, but got it out—”and they don’t let you in because you get poisoned or something?”
“Yes, I think that’s it.”
“There are two places. There’s one over at Red Mountain and another over at Ballarat.”
“Where are they?”
“Well—” The boy stopped to think. “Red Mountain’s straight ahead, maybe ten miles, and Ballarat’s over there” —he pointed west across the orange groves—”maybe fifteen miles.”