The Stutterer | Page 3

asked.
"No," answered the one in the cellar. "They won't for a while. I've
scattered depots of radiation all through the town. They'll be some time
tracking them all down, before they can get to me."
In a flash of his mind, Hall revealed his escape and the one on Grismet
nodded and said: "Be careful. Be very careful. You are our only hope."

Hall returned then to the seventeen, and he said with his thoughts: "All
right, now you can look." Immobile in their darkness, they snatched at
his mind, and as he opened his eyes, they, too, saw the splendors of the
mountains and the valley, the blue sky, and the gold sun high overhead.
* * * * *
The new man was young, only twenty-six. He was lean and dark and
very enthusiastic about his work. He sat straight in his chair waiting
attentively while his superior across the desk leafed through a folder.
"Jordan. Tom Jordan," the older man finally said. "A nice old Earth
name. I suppose your folks came from there."
"Yes, sir," the new man said briskly.
The chief closed the folder.
"Well," he said, "your first job is a pretty important one."
"I realize that, sir," Jordan said. "I know it's a great responsibility for a
man just starting with the Commission, but I'll give it every thing I
have."
The chief leaned back in his seat and scratched his chin thoughtfully.
"Normally we start a beginner like you working in a pair with an older
man. But we just haven't got enough men to go around. There are eight
thousand planets there"--he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to
a wall-sized map of the galaxy--"and we've got to cover every one. It
seems reasonable that if he escaped this planet, he'll go to another that
will by its atmosphere or its temperature give him some natural
advantage over us--some place that is either burning hot or at absolute
zero, or perhaps with a chlorine or sulfur dioxide atmosphere. That's
why"--he hesitated a minute, but continued because he was a truthful
man--"I picked you for Earth. It's the most populated of all the planets
and it seems the least likely one that he would choose."

Jordan's face dropped a little bit when he heard the last piece of
information, but he said: "I understand, sir, and if he's there, I'll bring
him back."
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