Planet Of No Return

“But people must have programmed it. So they are morally responsible for the killing, aren’t they?”

“Absolutely. They are the real criminals who should be brought to justice.”

Lea watched with growing distaste as the images of the shattered war machine flickered and changed. “At least this killer-robot has been destroyed. Perhaps that is what is going on out there, what this war is all about. The pilots of those aircraft were trying to stop these robots.”

“They were — but how do you know that there were pilots in the jets? They could have been robots too.”

“That’s crazy. A war of robots fighting robots on a virtually uninhabited planet, and incidentally shooting up the surviving people at the same time. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It may not make sense to us — but it’s happening out there, you can’t deny that. Those war machines must come from some place on this planet.”

“Underground factories?”

“Perhaps. We’ve chewed that one over before. We are just going to have to keep looking for the Place With No Name.”

“I’m not going to lie and say that I miss him, but isn’t that going to be difficult with Ravn dead?”

“Difficult, but not impossible. We’ll just keep pushing north, staying under cover of the forest as much as we can. We have just had evidence of what could happen to us if we are seen.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to travel at night?”

“No. We’re safer by daylight. Whatever kind of detection equipment the machines use, radio location, infrared, heat monitors, anything, the devices will work just as well in the dark. While we have to depend upon vision alone. My empathetic sense will enable us to avoid the tribesmen, but is no good in detecting the machines. So we’ll move by day to enable us to keep our eyes open for the war machines, to see them before they spot us.”

Although the tension and the danger were still there, the journey was easier without the venomous presence of Ravn. He had died while trying to betray them; he would not be missed. Their course was almost due north now, with the great inland sea off to their right at all times. They stayed among the trees and paralleled the open plain. As the days passed they saw fewer and fewer animals grazing there, perhaps because the military presence was now much greater. Aircraft passed over at least once a day, swinging in wide circles as though searching for something. One night there was a battle of some kind over the horizon; distant explosions shook the ground and they could see the flare of explosions against the clouds.

It was a day later that the war column passed. They saw the clouds of dust clearly building up to the north, quickly billowing even higher. At first it resembled a sandstorm — but this was grassy plain, not desert, and there was nothing natural about this steady advance.

“Up among the trees, quickly,” Brion said, leading the way with ground-eating strides. “There’s a ridge up there. We want to be behind it — with solid stone between us and their detection equipment if that’s what I think it is.”

He threw the bundle down among the rocks, then helped Lea the rest of the way up the hill. There were great jumbled boulders here, and they wormed their way into the space under one of the largest, completely concealing themselves. Brion pushed the bundle with the metal apparatus even further down to make it as undetectable as possible. Then he piled up the flatter rocks into a rough shelter, leaving thin openings through which they could peer out.

“I can hear them now,” Lea said.” All that rumbling and rattling. Here they come!”

Dark masses were visible now, running in front of the dust clouds, growing larger and ever larger as they came on. Massive forms, heavily armoured and armed weapons of war. Smaller and more agile machines were soon visible, darting back and forth, flanking them on all sides. These covering forces were everywhere, spreading out and nosing along the lake shore and even up to the hillside. Lea cringed down in their hiding place as a flight of jets roared low over their heads; the trailing explosion of their supersonic flight crashed down upon the stone shelter. As the armada advanced the plain became black with fighting machines. As far as they could see it was thickly covered with the engines of war. Their ears ached with the metallic roar.

It was late afternoon before the main body of the armoured column had passed, but squads of the smaller and faster tanks still coursed about in their wake.

“That was quite a display,” Lea said. “An inhuman one. Out there was nothing but machines. Programmed machines. If there had been human operators driving those things I would have sensed their massed emotions, even at this distance. But there was absolutely nothing.”

“Couldn’t there have been a few people there, somewhere among the machines? In control?”