The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (5 page)

‘At first I made relatively little progress. With the televisor I examined all the nearest termitaries, and fascinating work it was following the workers along the passages of their homes as they carried food and building materials hither and thither. I watched the enormous bloated queen in the royal nursery, laying her endless stream of eggs: one every few seconds, night and day, year after year. Although she was the centre of the colony’s activities, yet when I focused the psychometer on her the needles did not so much as flicker. The very cells of my body could do better than that! The monstrous queen was only a brainless mechanism, none the less mechanical because she was made of protoplasm, and the workers looked after her with the care we would devote to one of our useful robots.

‘For a number of reasons I had not expected the queen to be the ruling force of the colony, but when I began to explore with psychometer and televisor, nowhere could I discover any creature, any super-termite, which directed and supervised the operations of the rest. This would not have surprised the scientists of Three, for they hold that the termites are governed by instinct alone. But my instrument could have detected the nervous stimuli which constitute automatic reflex actions, and yet I found nothing. I would turn up the amplification to its utmost, put on a pair of those primitive but very useful “head-phones” and listen hour on hour. Sometimes there would be those faint characteristic cracklings we have never been able to explain, but generally the only sound was the subdued washing noise, like waves breaking on some far-off beach, caused by the massed intellects of the planet reacting on my apparatus.

‘I was beginning to get discouraged when there occurred one of those accidents which happen so often in science. I was dismantling the instrument after another fruitless investigation when I happened to knock the little receiving loop so that it pointed to the ground. To my surprise the needles started flickering violently. By swinging the loop in the usual way I discovered that the exciting source lay almost directly underneath me, though at what distance I could not guess. In the phones was a continuous humming noise, interspersed with sudden flickerings. It sounded for all the world like any electric machine operating, and the frequency, one hundred thousand mega mega cycles, was not one on which minds have ever been known to function before. To my intense annoyance, as you can guess, I had to return to England at once, and so I could not do anything more at the time.

‘It was a fortnight before I could return to Termite Island, and in that time I had to overhaul my little space-yacht owing to an electrical fault. At some time in her history, which I know to have been an eventful one, she had been fitted with ray screens. They were, moreover, very good ray screens, much too good for a law-abiding ship to possess. I have every reason to believe, in fact, that more than once they have defied the cruisers of the Assembly. I did not much relish the task of checking over the complex automatic relay circuits, but at last it was done and I set off at top speed for the Pacific, travelling so fast that my bow wave must have been one continuous explosion. Unfortunately, I soon had to slow down again, for I found that the directional beam I had installed on the island was no longer functioning. I presumed that a fuse had blown, and had to take observations and navigate in the ordinary way. The accident was annoying but not alarming, and I finally spiralled down over Termite Island with no premonition of danger.

‘I landed inside my little moat, and went to the door of the laboratory. As I spoke the key-word, the metal seal slid open and a tremendous blast of vapour gushed out of the room. I was nearly stupefied by the stuff, and it was some time before I recovered sufficiently to realise what had happened. When I regained my senses I recognised the smell of hydrogen cyanide, a gas which is instantly fatal to human beings but which only affects us after a considerable time.

‘At first I thought that there had been some accident in the laboratory, but I soon remembered that there were not enough chemicals to produce anything like the volume of gas that had gushed out. And in any case, what could possibly have produced such an accident?

‘When I turned to the laboratory itself, I had my second shock. One glance was sufficient to show that the place was in ruins. Not a piece of apparatus was recognisable. The cause of the damage was soon apparent—the power plant, my little atomic motor, had exploded. But why? Atomic motors do not explode without very good reason; it would be bad business if they did. I made a careful examination of the room and presently found a number of little holes coming up through the floor—holes such as the termites make when they travel from place to place. My suspicions, incredible though they were, began to be confirmed. It was not completely impossible that the creatures might flood my room with poisonous gas, but to imagine that they understood atomic motors—that was too much! To settle the matter I started hunting for the fragments of the generator, and to my consternation found that the synchronising coils had been short-circuited. Still clinging to the shattered remnants of the osmium toroid were the jaws of the termite that had been sacrificed to wreck the motor…

‘For a long time I sat in the ship, considering these outstanding facts. Obviously, the damage had been wrought by the intelligence I had located for a moment on my last visit. If it were the termite ruler, and there was nothing else it could very well be, how did it come to possess its knowledge of atomic motors and the only way in which to wreck them? For some reason, possibly because I was prying too deeply into its secrets, it had decided to destroy me and my works. Its first attempt had been unsuccessful, but it might try again with better results, though I did not imagine that it could harm me inside the stout walls of my yacht.

‘Although my psychometer and televisor had been destroyed, I was determined not to be defeated so easily, and started hunting with the ship’s televisor, which though not made for this kind of work could do it very well. Since I lacked the essential psychometer it was some time before I found what I was looking for. I had to explore great sections of the ground with my instrument, focusing the view point through stratum after stratum and examining any suspicious rock that came into the field. When I was at a depth of nearly two hundred feet, I noticed a dark mass looming faintly in the distance, rather like a very large boulder embedded in the soil. But when I approached I saw with a great feeling of elation that it was no boulder, but a perfect sphere of metal, about twenty feet in diameter. My search had ended. There was a slight fading of the image as I drove the beam through the metal, and then on the screen lay revealed the lair of the super-termite.

‘I had expected to find some fantastic creature, perhaps a great naked brain with vestigial limbs, but at a glance I could see that there was no living thing in that sphere. From wall to wall that metal-enclosed space was packed with a maze of machinery, most of it very minute and almost unthinkably complex, and all of it clicking and buzzing with lightning-like rapidity. Compared to this miracle of electrical engineering, our great television exchanges would seem the creations of children or savages. I could see myriads of tiny relays operating, director valves flashing intermittently, and strangely shaped cams spinning among moving mazes of apparatus utterly unlike anything we have ever built. To the makers of this machinery, my atomic generator must have seemed a toy.

‘For perhaps two seconds I gazed in wonder at that amazing sight, and then, suddenly and incredibly, an obliterating veil of interference slashed down and the screen was a dancing riot of formless colour.

‘Here was something we have never been able to produce—a screen which the televisor could not penetrate. The power of this strange creature was even greater than I had imagined, and in the face of this latest revelation I no longer felt safe even in my ship. In fact, I had a sudden desire to put as many miles as possible between myself and Termite Island. This impulse was so strong that a minute later I was high over the Pacific, rising up through the stratosphere in the great ellipse which would curve down again in England.

‘Yes, you may smile or accuse me of cowardice, saying that my grandfather Vorac would not have done so—but listen.

‘I was about a hundred miles from the island, thirty miles high and already travelling at two thousand miles an hour when there came a sudden crashing of relays, and the low purr of the motors changed to a tremendous deep-throated roar as an overload was thrown on to them. A glance at the board showed me what had happened—the ray screens were on, flaring beneath the impact of a heavy induction beam. But there was comparatively little power behind the beam, though had I been nearer it would have been a very different tale, and my screens dissipated it without much trouble. Nevertheless, the occurrence gave me an unpleasant shock for the moment, until I remembered that old trick of electrical warfare and threw the full field of my geodesic generators into the beam. I switched on the televisor just in time to see the incandescent fragments of Termite Island fall back into the Pacific…

‘So I returned to England, with one problem solved and a dozen greater ones formulated. How was it that the termite-brain, as I supposed the machine to be, had never revealed itself to humans? They have often destroyed the homes of its peoples, but as far as I know it has never retaliated. Yet directly I appeared it attacked me, though I was doing it no harm! Perhaps, by some obscure means, it knew that I was not a man, but an adversary worthy of its powers. Or perhaps, though I do not put the suggestion seriously, it is a kind of guardian protecting Three from invaders such as ourselves.

‘Somewhere there is an inconsistency that I cannot understand. On the one hand we have that incredible intelligence possessing much, if not all of our knowledge, while on the other are the blind, relatively helpless insects waging an endless war with puny weapons against enemies their ruler could exterminate instantly and without effort. Behind this mad system there must be a purpose, but it is beyond my comprehension. The only rational explanation I can conceive is that for most of the time the termite brain is content to let its subjects go their own, mechanical ways, and that only very seldom, perhaps once in an age, does it take an active part in guiding them. As long as it is not seriously interfered with, it is content to let man do what he likes. It may even take a benevolent interest in him and his works.

‘Fortunately for us, the super-termite is not invulnerable. Twice it miscalculated in its dealings with me, and the second time cost it its existence—I cannot say life. I am confident that we can overcome the creature, for it, or others like it, still control the remaining billions of the race. I have just returned from Africa, and termites there are still organised as they have always been. On this excursion I did not leave my ship, or even land. I believe I have incurred the enmity of an entire race and I am taking no chances. Until I have an armoured cruiser and a staff of expert biologists, I am leaving the termites strictly alone. Even then I shall not feel quite safe, for there may be yet more powerful intelligences on Three than the one I encountered. That is a risk we must take, for unless we can defeat these beings, Planet Three will never be safe for our kind.’

The President cut off the record and turned to the waiting assembly.

‘You have heard Theton’s report,’ he said, ‘I appreciate its importance and at once sent a heavy cruiser to Three. As soon as it arrived, Theton boarded it and left for the Pacific.

‘That was two days ago. Since then I have heard from neither Theton nor the cruiser, but I do know this:

‘An hour after the ship left England, we picked up the radiations from her screens, and in a very few seconds other disturbances—cosmics, ultra-cosmics, induction and tremendous long-wave, low quantum radiations such as we have never used in battle—began to come through in ever-increasing quantities. This lasted for nearly three minutes, when suddenly there came one titanic blast of energy, lasting for a fraction of a second and then—nothing. That final burst of power could have been caused by nothing less than the detonation of an entire atomic generating plant, and must have jarred Three to its core.

‘I have called this meeting to put the facts of the matter before you and to ask you to vote on the subject. Shall we abandon our plans for Three, or shall we send one of our most powerful super-dreadnoughts to the planet? One ship could do as much as an entire section of the Fleet in this matter, and would be safe, in case… but I cannot imagine any power which could defeat such a ship as our “Zuranther”. Will you please register your votes in the usual way? It will be a great setback if we cannot colonise Three, but it is not the only planet in the system, though it is the fairest.’

There came subdued clicks and a faint humming of motors as the councillors pressed their coloured buttons, and on the television screen appeared the words: For 967; Against 233.

‘Very well, the “Zuranther” will leave at once for Three. This time we will follow her movements with the televisor and then if anything does go wrong, we shall at least obtain some idea of the weapons the enemy uses.’

Hours later the tremendous mass of the flagship of the Martian fleet dropped thunderously through the outer reaches of Earth’s atmosphere towards the far-off waters of the Pacific. She fell in the heart of a tornado, for her captain was taking no chances and the winds of the stratosphere were being annihilated by her flaming ray screens.

But on a tiny island far over the eastern horizon, the termites had been preparing for the attack they knew must come, and strange, fragile mechanisms had been erected by myriad blind and toiling insects. The great Martian warship was two hundred miles away when her captain located the island in his televisor. His finger reached towards the button which would start the enormous ray generators, but swift as he was the almost instant acting relays of the termite mind were far swifter. Though, in any case, the outcome would have been the same.