Jr. John W. Campbell

“ Some of the Sirians realized the danger that was facing them, and they had continued long researches on man's brain, and at last had discovered the secret of giving a machine that emotion we call devotion, loyalty, or gratitude. And they built a great machine on that principle and used material energy to power it. It was a success. It could think original thoughts. It pointed out the danger of the existing machines—they were stronger than man. It was only man's mobility and ability to control all mobile machines that had made him superior, for a brain without a tool, or body is helpless. ”

“ Each force was equal, and could not ally itself with any other, for the machines could not lie or state other than their thoughts, and each wanted supreme power. They developed new weapons, weapons whose strength lay in their number. One by one the machine brains had gone down to defeat, the men of that ship helping to disturb the balance of forces by ever so little, yet always enough to throw one side down to defeat, yet always remaining in hiding. At last there remained but one machine-brain, and its weakened force necessitated its return to the devastated planet. ”

“ But all the scientists of the System were working desperately to design some new weapon, some new machine that was a little faster, a little more powerful; although with resistance in space and with the tremendous energies of matter at their disposal, there was little lack of power as far as the speed of the ships were concerned. Ten thousand times more powerful than the titanic energies of atoms, this energy had defeated the Martians that memorable day in May, 1947, and it was a full ten billion times more powerful than the energies of coal, of oil, of the fuels man had known before that day. ”

“ And sixteen hundred years it had raced across space, to be destroyed at last by another race of men. The battle was over, and the machine awaited its destruction.
We rayed it out of existence. It was too great a menace to keep.
Some people still do not believe that those Sirians were truly machines. They can not believe that a machine can have intelligence, but certainly Waterson's calculating machine has intelligence of a sort. And they ask, what would a machine want to exist for? It would have no aim, nothing to perform. Why should it want to live, or exist? ”

“ More than fifteen million human beings lost their lives in that great struggle, either in the battles in space, or caught in the Dis rays during that battle on Venus.
But those fifteen millions have died a painless death, and twenty billions live because of their sacrifice. And it was not a vain sacrifice. We have learned much in return. No machines man ever made equaled the machines we captured there on Mars. And man will never experiment on the lines of the machine-brain. He has been warned. The brain-machine we captured was destroyed without investigation. ”

“ Our life is a constant struggle, the machines, at least, had eliminated that. There seems to me no reason why a machine should want to live, but certainly it has less reason to pass out of existence than we have! ”

“ But astronomers on the planet and most of the System's scientists were there to watch the Sirians on Mars through their great telescopes. And these astronomers saw what the Sirians intended, and saw that they were well on their way to fulfilling their aim.
A planet is balanced in its orbit about its parent sun with the delicacy of a diamond on a jeweler's scales. But, like the diamond, if it be displaced by some force, it reaches a new state of equilibrium. Thus, if the diamond is further lowered in the scale by adding a small weight, it soon reaches a new point of equilibrium. ”

“ The planet would have been pulled to pieces, except that the very attractor beams that were pulling on it tended to relieve the stress. But the cargo ships of Venus were pulling to keep the planet in motion. It was a strange thing to contemplate! Two mighty forces, one a fleet of two hundred million small ships, the other a force of as many thousand huge freight carriers, having a tug-o-war for a planet! But the odds were too great. Slowly the Sirians won. The planet was steadily dropping toward the sun. ”

“ But steadily the forces of man were conquering. In a hell of flashing Dis rays, the new ships were proving their worth. The flaming rays had seared the land below for many miles, but the fleet of the Sirians was fast going. The new fast ships of man could dodge the rays of the Sirians, turn and dart on the tail of their attacker, then hang there, the attractor beam giving them an added grip until they could flash the machine into nothingness with the Dis ray. ”

“ Now a great fleet of cargo carriers from Mars, Venus and Earth came up, and with them came wrecker ships, capable of picking up on their powerful attractor beams an entire million-ton passenger-freight liner—great liners themselves, all equipped with attractor beams. Soon they were all using their power to bring the planet back to its normal speed. It did not take the ships of that mighty fleet, many specially designed for heavy listing and towing, many designed for tremendous loads, very long to bring the planet back to its age-old orbit. ”

“ If you were told that the planet you were on was sinking toward the sun, you would be surprised, horrified, and would probably try to make a bargain-buy on real estate, while the other man sold his to get his money out. ”

“ For the sun pulls on a planet with a titanic force; it draws it in with the apparent force gravity, and another similar, but opposite force, centrifugal force of its revolution in its orbit, is constantly tending to throw it into the depths of space. These are the two forces that are always balanced. Suppose the planet is drawn nearer the sun; it revolves in a smaller orbit—and it revolves in that smaller orbit with a higher speed—for it has fallen in toward the sun; it has gained speed as any falling body would. ”

“ There was a limit to what he could stand, though, and it took him many thousands of miles to bring the machine down to a speed compatible with atmospheric conditions of the planet.
The air of the planet seemed thick with traffic, mighty half-million ton lift freighters and passenger ships setting out toward Earth, smaller private machines, but none were slower nor faster than the others, for all were limited only by the acceleration they could stand. There was only one speed limit, that of economical, safe operation, for with all space to move in, there was no need of speed laws. ”

“ The notion that Man was to be an easy victor was fast disappearing. These machines were coming to form an ever-growing cloud of wheeling ships. Still, man had destroyed fully half their fleet in that desperate struggle; they must spend some time in making up those losses. But Man had lost nearly a third of his great fleet. Four hundred thousand brave men had been lost. It was not even a victory, and it had cost Man far more than it had cost the Sirians. They had learned something from them, though. Perhaps radio control would enable man to do an equal amount of damage. ”

“ Interplanetary space we have the radiations of the sun to depend upon, and they are decidedly sufficient, usually superfluously so. But in the infinite depths of interstellar space, there is only darkness and a perfect reservoir for radiations. There would be continuous cooling by radiation, and no sun to warm the ship. I could understand how the ship might carry enough matter to warm it for one hundred years, but in sixteen hundred years so much energy must be radiated that the entire mass would not suffice. Nothing short of an entire planet would be sufficient. ”

“ It seems to us quite logical that machines might some day, perhaps in the distant future, be developed to solve for our scientists now apparently insoluble problems. Or they might even be made to state their own problems and work them out—in other words, it might some day be possible to have a machine with almost a working brain. ”

“ I believe that there are some man-made vehicles out there in space sending those signals. No man of the System has ever had reason to venture beyond the orbit of Neptune for any great distance; there would be no reason for it, as none of the outer planets are habitable. The rate of increase of the signal strength, coupled with observations made from Earth, Mars and Venus, have made it evident that they are at present about one and a quarter billion miles away, but approaching us at the rate of 1000 miles a second. ”

“ There was no real naval fleet. But mechanical devices had reached a great peak of perfection and the little space ships were so cheap, so easily operated, and so eminently safe, that nearly every family had several, and new ones were always in demand. There were mighty factories to meet this demand. Twenty billion people can absorb a tremendous number of machines. That was the greatest protection we had, and it was that quantity production, developed by the American, Ford, that made Waterson's campaign possible. But we were to learn much of quantity production methods before that war was over! ”

“ None ever reached Earth to warn the fleet. Every one of them was destroyed. But when the Sirian fleet was well on its way—it turned—and headed for Venus! They had purposely let that one scout reach the Solarian fleet with the news that the fleet was headed for Earth—then they redirected their course. The scouts from the Solarian fleet did reach Earth—but soon after the last of the scouts following the Sirian fleet had been destroyed, their radio barrage was lifted. All the ships on Venus were concentrated on Earth, and Venus was left unprotected. ”

“ The Sirians had succeeded in breaking up every spinning column formation by simply getting into the midst of it before it was formed completely. It required perfect coordination of several machines to do it, but it was always done. The long range Dis rays were excellent now in defending a city, but useless for attack because of the terrific weight of the apparatus. They could not attack the Sirian fleet. If they did the production machines would have been so built up by the time they reached the planet that any ordinary rate of destruction would be easily equaled by the production! ”

“ All the remaining machines were equally powerful. Any one of them could have built a brain-machine that could easily conquer the others—but it too would have to bow to its creator. They fought it out. ”

“ Thus we see that as long as the planet revolves in its orbit, it will never fall, and to pull it away from the sun is impossible as long as it revolves in its orbit. But if it slows down in its flight about the sun it at once has less centrifugal force. It automatically falls toward the sun until it has gained velocity enough to establish a new orbit of equilibrium. If this energy, too, is withdrawn; if it is made to stand still in its orbit; it will fall straight to the sun. ”

“ No conceivable force, therefore, could be great enough to displace the planet in its orbit more than a few million miles by pulling it either in toward the sun, or out from it, and as soon as that force was released, it would spring back to its original position as the diamond would regain its balance on removing the disturbing weight. ”

“ So the Solarians left, and behind on the ground there were a few ships; a great number had been rayed into nothingness. The Sirians had won this first victory, but the Solarians could soon make up for this loss. They had twenty billions to back them up, and they had the resources of three planets. It seemed as though the invaders could not last long, but we had yet to learn the true meaning of mass production.
No man could hang around the encampment of that alien race. But above them television broadcasts were suspended, and some were installed in the buildings of the city. ”

“ Mars was a deserted planet now. All its population had moved to the other worlds. Most of them moved to Earth, on the other side of the sun. Only the workers in the great factories remained. They were not compelled to. They were told of the danger of their position, but those factories could contribute 1500 ships an hour, and they were manned. The fleet had gathered on Mars, awaiting the news of the Sirians, when the report of the scouts was flashed across the ether. ”

“ I suggest that in the meantime Venus makes several million of the long range Dis ray projectors, and distribute them all over the planet, to be turned on from a central station, or by their own separate crews. I have no doubt that the Sirians will attack that planet before we are ready to attack them. Earth, too, must be prepared. But in the meantime we can begin the work on the new de-activating field projectors, as I call them."
Waterson was right. It was three days later that the Sirian fleet left for Venus with a number of torpedo-ships so tremendous, it is absolutely inconceivable. ”

“ As there would be no resistance encountered in space, once the machine had been accelerated to its definite speed of 1000 miles per second, on leaving Sirius it would be able to make the trip across space with no expenditure of energy, until it reached its goal and slowed down to the speed of a planet. Hence no great amount of matter-fuel would be needed to drive the machine. ”

“ Those from the south crept in behind them, and suddenly the sphere started into the air, then went flying out into space at terrific speed. It barely escaped the Dis rays of the attackers. Only its tremendous acceleration saved it. Now several thousand of the torpedo ships shot after it, the rest falling into the form of a great disc to block the path of the pursuers. Man had long been accustomed to two dimensional maneuvering, but the ease with which these Sirians fell into complex three dimensional formations showed long practice in the art of warfare in space. ”

“ Just outside the curtain of destruction waited the entire Solarian fleet. Slowly they closed in till their Dis rays swept all the ships within sixty miles of the edge out of existence; then rapidly the de-activator beams were forced ever sharper and sharper, till at last only the Sphere and a few hundred of the torpedo-ships, several hundred of the torpedo-ship constructors, and the corresponding cargo ships and worker machines were left. These had been saved for investigation by the scientists, for they were helpless. ”