In the chair the operator gradually became aware that someone was standing over him. It was an effort for the man to draw the attention of his deep-socketed and reddened eyes from the board. When he did it was just for an instant and Pere had only a glimpse of the pain in their depths, of eyes peeping out of their black-rimmed pits like frightened animals. Then their attention wavered back to the board and the thin arm lifted tremulously to touch a control.
"Thank God you’ve come… you’ve come at last thank…" The words, scarcely a whisper to begin with, died away to a wheeze.
The officer’s arms were pocked and scarred with needle holes: streaked with hardened rivulets of blood. The jumbled cartons and vials on the table told a wordless story of a man forcing himself to stay awake and active long past human limits: there were stimulants, sleep-surrogate, glucose, anesthetics, vitamin complexes. He had obviously been days alone in this chair, manning all four battle stations hooked into his own board. Alone — for some unknown and terrible reason alone-he had fought the war, waiting for help. With an uncontrollable feeling of revulsion Pere saw that the man had soiled himself as he sat there.
"General Natia, man that free board," he ordered.
She slipped efficiently into the chair and set up a repeater from the others. Quickly taking in the factors of the conflict she called out, "Ready, sir."
Pere threw the command switch and the red bulb winked out on the board before him, and the one in front of Natia flashed on.
It was as though the light had been the spark of life holding the man at the controls. When the red bulb snuffed out he dropped his face into his hands and collapsed sideways into the cushioning chair. Pere took him by the shoulder and shook him until the hands dropped away and the last traces of consciousness stiffened the lolling head. With painful effort the man opened his eyes.
"What happened?" Pere asked. "Where is everyone else?"
"Dead," the feeble voice whispered, near to death itself. "I was the only one didn’t die — in bed at the time. Just chance I wasn’t touching any metal. Just sheets, mattress. Robots say it was a vibration source — subsonic — supersonic — something new. Curdled everyone, killed them — coagulated the protein. Like eggs… cooked eggs… all dead."
When the man sank into unconsciousness again Pere signalled to the medical officer who was standing by. Pere looked down at the solid steel floor beneath his feet and shuddered; the vibration weapon might be used again at any time. Or could it? The robots must have taken some preventative measures. He turned to the command robot, standing with steady metallic patience by the computor bank. Shaped like a normal motile, this robot’s unique function was apparent only by the large vision screen on its chest and the thick cable, a metallic unbilical cord, that ran back from it to the computors behind. It was simply an extension of the giant computors and logic and memory units that were the heart of HQ.
"Have you found out what generated the killing vibration?" Pere asked the command robot.
"A machine that assembled and attached itself to the outer wall of HQ. It was detected as soon as it began operating and the frequencies were analyzed and neutralized in three minutes and seventeen seconds. No equipment or robots were injured since the frequencies used only caused resonance in animal protein. All of the staff, with the exception of Colonel Frey, were killed instantly. Large quantities of food in the lockers —"
"We’ll concern ourselves with the food later. Where is the machine?"
"There," the robot said, pointing towards the far wall. It led the way, its cable trailing smoothly behind it, and pulled a cover from the yard high object resting there. It resembled no machine Pere had ever seen, rather it looked like a tangled mass of tiny gleaming roots: the red earth still packed between them heightened the illusion.
"How does it work?"
The robot reached out — leaning very close to focus its microscopic eyepieces — and carefully pulled one of the strands free. It lay on the robot’s outstretched metallic palm, eight inches long, an eighth of an inch in diameter. Seen close it was not completely flexible, but made instead of pivoted and smoothly finished segments. The robot pointed out the parts of interest.
"The vibration generator is made up of a large number of these machines, all of similar construction. At the front end is a hard-edged orifice that drills a hole in the ground. Debris is carried back through the body of the machine and eliminated here: in operation it is not unlike the common earthworm. Directional apparatus here guides it, orientated by a gravimeter to locate our base. Here a power unit and here a frequency generator. Singly the machines are harmless, their radiation of no importance. But when grouped together and activated at the same time they produce the deadly frequency.
"Why weren’t they detected before going into operation?"
"Their individual mass is too small and they have no metallic components. In addition they move very slowly, it took them a long time to reach HQ and mass for the attack."
"How long?"
"By measuring the sensitivity of their gravimeters in response to the bulk of HQ and timing their speed of movement, it has been estimated that they entered the ground four years ago."
"Four years!" General Pere was aghast at the thought. The miles of dirt and rock that surrounded HQ on all sides, formally so comforting, changed suddenly to the hiding place of countless crawling, remorseless machines, closing in with mechanical patience.
"Can they be stopped from constructing another group-machine?"
"That is no problem now that it is known what we must guard against. Defensive screens and detectors have been installed."
Anxiety seeped slowly away and Pere wiped the trickling sweat from his face as he looked around at his staff. All of the battle stations were manned now and the collapsed form of Colonel Frey had been taken out. Everything was functioning perfectly — except for the damn heat.
"And what’s causing that?" Pere snapped. "Why the rise in temperature? You must have found the cause."
"The increased temperature is caused by areas of in-tense heat in the soil around this station. The cause of this localized heat increase is unknown."
Pere found himself worrying his thumb nail with his front teeth and angrily jerked it from his mouth. "Cause unknown! I should think it would be obvious. If the Enemy can build complex wave generators into something as small as this piece of plastic spaghetti, they can certainly build more of them with some kind of compact heat generator. These things could be coming in a second wave after the coagulator generators."
"This theory was considered, as well as other high probability explanations, but we have no evidence…"
"Then get evidence!" Pere was angry at the persistant logicality of all robots, no matter how theoretically brilliant they might be. This obvious explanation of the mysterious heat seemed to him to be more than a hunch or guess, it was almost a certainty. He thumbed the button labeled IMPLEMENT ORDER on the robot’s chest and issued a command. "Search will be made at once beyond the heat zone to uncover any more of these specialized boring machines."
With his defense taken care of he turned his attention to the war. Operations were proceeding so smoothly that the knot of tension in his midriff softened a bit. Lights flickered across the control boards, coded symbols for logistics and intelligence. The operators collated and questioned, feeding their results to Command Prime where General Natia sat relaxed yet completely alert. The electronic war of course moved at too great a pace for the human mind to follow. All of the missiles, anti-missile missiles, interceptors, bombers and tank squadrons were robot-controlled and — operated. Computors of varying degrees of intelligence and responsibility did the actual battle ordering. The same was true of logistics. But men had started this war and guided it towards its finish. The human operators made sense of the shifting factors in the global battle and chose the best course from among those fed to them by the strategy machines. The war had been going well Analysis of the results showed a small increment of victory during the past nine months. If this increment could be kept steady — or even increased — another generation or two might see complete victory. It was a pleasant, though slightly disconcerting, thought for Pere.