Forbidden Planet (4 page)

Adams cut in, “Then give me the co-ordinates for landing. As a senior member of the Expedition, you’re required to know them.”

“You understand I shall disclaim responsibility? For anything that may happen to you.” The tremor was back in the voice, definitely a tremor of anger this time.

“The co-ordinates please.”

We heard a sound which can only have been a sigh. And then, “I have the log here, and our Astrogator’s figures . . .”

Adams made a sign to Quinn, who went quickly over to him. Farman, pad and pencil ready, bent closer. The voice began to call off figures interspersed with technical phrases. They had no meaning for me—but Farman was copying them down, with Quinn studying the pad over his shoulder.

“That is all,” said the voice. Adams shot a quick glance at Quinn, who was now rapidly figuring in a notebook of his own.

Adams stalled. “I’ll check back,” he said into the transmitter, and began to read from the pad. He had almost finished when Quinn looked up, nodded decisively.

Adams came to the end, and the voice said, “Perfectly correct, Commander.” Again we heard that unmistakable sigh.

There was silence after it. It was a different sort of silence from the others, and Quinn jumped back to his controls. He fiddled with dials for a moment, but then looked up and shook his head. “Cut off,” he said.

Nobody spoke for a moment, and then Farman said, “Not what you’d call a red carpet welcome, huh?”

Adams looked at Quinn. “Those co-ords did check with your trace figures?”

“Definitely.” Quinn was very sure. “Almost exactly in the middle of my fifty-mile square.”

“What were you thinking, Skipper?” Farman asked. “That Morbius might be bringing us down in the wrong place?”

“Or in the middle of trouble,” Adams said. To my surprise he glanced over at me. I thought he’d forgotten my existence. “What did you think of that voice, Doc? Occur to you he might be off his beam?”

“No,” I said. “No, it didn’t.” I pondered. “Emotional-swinging between anger and fear. That’s what I thought—”

“Fear?” Adams pounced on the word. “For himself?”

“I don’t think so.” I shrugged. “I’m only guessing, of course. Seemed to me he was genuinely afraid on your account. The anger was because you refused to take his say-so.”

Quinn said, “Skipper, what did you mean when you asked if he might be under duress?”

“Just that,” Adams said. “Why shouldn’t there be—intelligent native life down there?” He sat back, half-closing his eyes, weighing everything in his mind.

It didn’t take him long. He sat up and looked at Jerry Farman and snapped, “Punch out a course from those figures,” and switched to Quinn. “Lon, get busy on atmosphere and grav. tests as we lose altitude.” He swiveled his chair and switched on the communicator and picked up its mike.

“Commander to crew,” he said into it. “Commander to crew. Now hear this: We are going to land on our objective. Until further orders the ship is on B-Alert. Repeat—from now until further orders, B-Alert, Bosun: report to Control Area when Alert complete. That is all.”

He switched off the communicator and looked at me. Farman was already busy feeding figures to his computer, Quinn intent on his control banks.

“Alert-B,” Adams snapped. “That doesn’t stop your pre-landing check, Major.”

I muttered an apology, and got myself out of there in double time and made for the surgery. It had no viewer, but that didn’t matter. I was too busy anyway . . .

Some time after I’d passed the last man, another order came from Adams, and some crumbs of information. Over the communicator, his voice was clipped and flat:

“Now hear this: The ship will be on A-Alert from the moment this message ends. On A-Alert from the time this message ends. We are preparing to set down. Tests show this is a Terra-type planet. Atmosphere and gravity don’t—repeat, do not—call for suits or helmets. Dress will be Field Order Two, with arms. Bosun, report to Control Area when A-Alert complete. That is all.”

I hurried to my eight-by-six to change . . .

We were down. We’d landed on Altair-4.

We were ready for anything—but it didn’t seem to be happening.

Like some huge impossible mushroom growth, the ship squatted on her landing gear. With the turquoise-tinted light gleaming on her hull, she seemed to loom even bigger and sleeker than she had on the day, ten Earth-years and countless millions of miles ago, when I’d caught my first sight of her at the launching base.

Inside her, men were stationed at her blast and disintegrator guns, the open gun-ports making black holes in her glittering flanks. Outside, the rest of the hands, all armed, were spread in a protective circle. Some little way beyond the circle were the Officers—and, much to my delighted surprise, I was with them. I’d been afraid that, as we were still on Alert-A and ready for trouble, I was going to be ordered to stay aboard, in the Surgery. But I hadn’t been, thank God.

And—thank God again—no one was interfering with me. Adams, binoculars at his eyes, was making a slow and careful survey of the horizon. Farman was pacing up and down, dragging at a cigarette. Quinn, on hands and knees, seemed lost in examination of the sandy soil. I was on my own—and very lucky. The others had to think, but I didn’t. I could let them do the worrying and give myself up to my senses and try to absorb the strangeness . . .

It took some absorbing. Gone entirely was the feeling of similarity to Earth. We were on a desert, with a sun beating down on us. There was air we could breathe and sand we could walk on. There were vistas our eyes could see, and we could hear the crunching of our boots as we moved. But nothing was the same; nothing was even remotely Earthlike . . .

But I felt—wonderful. I drew in deep breaths of the soft, heady air. I looked up at the turquoise sky, and down at the red sand, I looked around at the weird stalagmitic spears of blue-grey rock which thrust up through the sand in haphazard clusters, and then I looked past them and out around the horizon at the ranges of jagged green-grey mountains on one side and the gentler slopes on the other; slopes which, shimmering in the glare, might be clothed in vegetation . . .

I was startled by Quinn’s voice from close beside me. It said, “Look at this, Doctor,” and I turned to see him holding out to me a chunk of the blue-grey rock.

“An extraordinary formation,” he said. “Harder than granite, but lighter than pumice!”

I stretched out my hand for the thing—but never finished the gesture. Because from behind me came a shout in Adams’ voice:

“Bosun! Alert—your left front!”

I whipped around and saw that Adams was pointing out across the red desert. Miles away in the middle distance, a dark cloud of sand was whirling toward us at tremendous speed. I told myself it might be some trick of wind, like a ‘dust-devil’ in Arizona, but somehow I knew it wasn’t.

I heard the Bosun barking orders—and saw four of the crewmen move up to stand level with Adams. After that, none of us moved. Or spoke.

The sand-cloud whirled on, making straight for us—and I saw, inside or perhaps just ahead of it, something from which the light struck metallic gleams.

The speed was so great that, in a matter of seconds, it was almost up to us—whatever it was—and decelerating with a smooth violence which raised the dust-cloud even higher. It came to a stop about twenty yards from where we stood, and a crewman on the right of Adams suddenly brought his blast gun up to his shoulder. The Bosun roared at him, and the man pulled the weapon down to the ready with a convulsive jerk. I couldn’t help sympathizing with him, though: there had been something—there was still something—about the swift, rushing approach which had tightened every muscle in my stomach.

The dust died down—and we found ourselves looking at what was obviously a vehicle. It had odd, frail-looking wheels, and seemed to be made of metal and plastic. Perhaps fifteen feet long, it was a weird, clumsy shape. In front, towering above the rest, was an amorphous mass of metal from the top of which came occasional stabs of light. Behind this, the flat, sled-like body had four seats protected by cone-shaped windscreens. But the seats were unoccupied—and, in front of me Farman muttered, “The damn thing’s empty!”

I heard myself saying, “That must be the—the engine in front. But where’s the driver?”

Adams said sharply, “Shut up. Watch.”

And I saw that the whole towering bulk of what I had taken for engine, the source of power, was in motion. It was rising, growing taller . . .

And it—it stepped down from the vehicle, leaving only the flat platform. The source of power, it seemed, was also the manipulator of the power . . .

It was erect—a bulbous shape some seven feet high and constructed like a mad infant’s drawing of a man, with the mass of it contained in the body. Below the body were two stumpy, stilt-like legs and projecting from the upper part, at the shoulders, two arm-like projections. The head was a dome-like excrescence, and it was from this that the stabs of light were coming . . .

The thing turned and began, slowly and ponderously, to walk toward us. The Bosun drew closer to Adams and said something, and Adams barked, “No!” decisively. “It’s got no weapon I can see.”

Jerry Farman said, “Could be a weapon, Skipper,” but Adams only made a gesture for silence.

We stood still, watching the thing plod close and closer. It had a curious, rolling gait—and I could see the leg-like projections were articulated.

It stopped, fronting us, about fifteen feet away. The front of the headpiece was louvred, and through the louvres lights were flashing. More brightly now, and in a pattern. A grating noise came from inside the metal shell—

And the thing spoke. The sound was a metallic monotone, but speech nevertheless.

I was so astonished that I missed the first two or three words. But I heard, “. . . welcome. I am to take the Commander and Officers to Doctor Morbius.”

On the last word, everything stopped. The lights were cut off. And the voice. And the grating sound which had gone with it.

It was as if the thing had died. Now it just stood there, a crudely shaped, inanimate hunk of dark metal.

An excited babble burst from Quinn as he gripped Adams by the arm. I caught the words, “. . . Robot . . . remote control—” and then he stopped. Fascinated, he dropped his hand from the Skipper’s arm and started forward.

But Adams reached out and grabbed his shoulder and pulled him roughly back. He staggered momentarily, then stood very still, shooting a baleful glance at Adams that I’d never have thought him capable of.

Farman was talking now. “Robot!” he was saying contemptuously. “Whoever saw one like that? Except in a kid’s viddy-strip.” I knew he was thinking how different this was from the hundreds of sleek, box-like robot-machines that were coming more and more into use at home. But in the back of my mind I was haunted by a memory I couldn’t pin down. Something to do with Robot. Not the fact, but the word itself . . .

The lights behind the louvres began to flash again. And the grating sound came, and then the voice.

“I am to inform you,” it clanged, “I am monitored to react to word Robby.”

And then the thing died again. No lights, no sound.

“Hear that, Lonnie?” Adams looked at Quinn. “You want to make some tests?”

“After you, sir.” Our Chief Devisor and Engineer was sulking.

Adams shrugged. He took a pace forward and stared at the hunk of metal and said slowly, “Robby—can you understand me?”

The lights winked on. “Yes.” The monosyllable clanged, and the voice stopped. But this time some of the lights stayed. In a steady pattern now, with no blinking and changing.

Adams said, “Do I have to use the monitor word every time I speak to you?”

“No.” The light-pattern was shifting again.

“You are”—Adams hesitated—“you’re a Robot machine?”

“Yes. Word Robby is contraction.”

“You’re under the control of Doctor Morbius?”

“Yes.” At the word ‘Morbius’ the pattern-change of the lights was. very fast. “I am to take Commander and Officers to Doctor Morbius.”

There was a silence then, and in it I heard myself speaking. I was saying, “My God—it thinks! Does everyone realize that? It thinks!”

Quinn said, “We don’t know that, Doctor. Not yet.” His anger, if it had lasted, was confining itself to Adams. “All we’ve seen is reaction and selectivity. From a basic bank.” His eyes were fixed on the Robot with the flaming curiosity of the expert.

Farman said, “Some bank! Ask it another, Skipper.”

Adams, lost in thought, growled something which might have been, “Ask it yourself—” and Farman looked at me and said, “You take a shot, Doc. I can’t think of anything.”

I stepped a pace forward, with half an eye on Adams. But he didn’t pay any attention. I looked at the Robot and said, “Robby—” and then realized I hadn’t thought of anything either.

The thing’s lights cut off, for a flick of time, then came on again. I guessed it was distinguishing between me and Adams. I said, “Robby—the atmosphere on this planet—it must be very rich in oxygen—” and then dried up.

“Oxygen content of air,” said the metallic voice, “is 4.7 above Terrapoint.”

“Jeez-us!” Farman grabbed at my arm. “That wasn’t even a question you gave it!” He stepped in front of me and looked at the Robot and raised his voice. He said:

“Hey, Robby—” and again I saw the lights cut off and then come on immediately—“Whadda we call you? Mister or Missus?”

There was a snicker from the crewmen: this was Farman all over, turning everything into a gag. I glared at him, and so did Quinn, who snarled, “If you think you’re going to get an answer to that—” and then stopped short, gaping.

“Question not intelligible,” said the metal voice. “Sex references inapplicable.”

There was a pause—and then a shout of laughter from the men. “That’s telling him!” said an anonymous voice from one of the flanking guards, and Farman grinned. A trifle ruefully, I thought.

He looked at the Robot again, and said, “All right—so you’re cute. Now answer this one—”

He swallowed the last words as Adams suddenly came out of his reverie. “Quit the foolery, Lieutenant,” he snapped. “And step back.”