The Robot Brains [with w_cat] - страница 19

The sky was bright blue and completely cloudless. There was no wind.

The man had his finger on the starting button. He continued to count:

"Four... Three... Two..."

Suddenly a great explosion shook the field. Great columns of flame and smoke covered the rockets.

The next moment a lot of Brains appeared in the field. They sent bright hot beams of fire from their energy weapons. In a few minutes all the laboratories were destroyed and all the people were killed. The Brains left nobody alive.

Telephones rang in the United Nations. The same thing happened in all the rocket bases of the world. The rocket research centres in Russia, Australia, China, and everywhere else were completely destroyed.

"For the first time in history the nations of the world are united, and we can do nothing," complained the Secretary-General.

He was standing at a high window and looking at the sky and stars. He could not see any way out of the situation. Nothing could stop the Brains... except, perhaps, Captain Christian. He was the only man who really knew about the Brains...

Christian opened his eyes and saw that he was lying on a bed in a room with white walls. Through a round window he could see the desert covered with black sand. The huge red sun hung in the black sky.

A door opened, and a man walked in.

"I am Paul, one of the Watchers," he said. "And you are, I think, from the twentieth century?"

"Captain Arthur Christian."

"Nice to meet you. I hope you are feeling well. Lunch is almost ready."

Christian stood up.

"There are a lot of questions - " he began.

The door opened. The woman who walked in was young and pretty. Christian noticed that both she and the young man had very wise eyes. Both Watchers were young - about twenty-five years old, Christian thought.

Paul said: "Barbara - Captain Arthur Christian."

Barbara smiled.

"It is an honour," she said, "to meet one of our ancestors."

They led Christian along a brightly lit corridor.

"Is this a spaceship?" the captain asked.

"Yes. We have just come from our base on the moon."

They came to a small comfortable room and sat down. Barbara brought lunch. Christian was very hungry and ate with pleasure.

"I wonder," said Christian after lunch, "how far away I am ahead of my time."

Paul looked at him carefully.

"You must prepare yourself for a shock, Captain," he said."...About one hundred thousand years!"

Christian put his glass on the table. One hundred thousand years! That was really a shock. He looked through the window at the black sand and the dyring sun. This, then, was the winter of Earth.

He looked at the Watchers again.

"There must be more than just the two of you," he said. "So far I've seen only the Brains and their giant women. What's happened to the rest of humanity?"

Paul rose and went to a wall with a large screen. He pressed a button, and Christian saw space with lots of stars.

"The humanity is there," said Paul. "Man has reached the stars"

Christian felt proud. After all, the human race was not really represented by the Brains. The stars... he dreamed a little, then remembered the reality.

"Do you know that the Brains have traveled into the past?" he said. "That they have come into the twentieth century and are murdering the best scientists of my time? Can the future be changed?"

Paul frowned. "That is a big question," he said, "even bigger than you think. I am not sure that I know the answer. Perhaps, it is a terrible mistake to try to change the past."

"But that's just what the Brains are doing!" said Christian. "Can you stop them?"

Perhaps," said Paul and rose from the table. "Let us go to the control room."

They came into a large round room with a large screen on the wall and a switchboard before it.

Paul said: "We can send the robots from here, and they will act as our eyes. We shall see on this screen all that they will see on the ground and underground."

He pressed some buttons on the switchboard, and the screen came to life.

The desert started moving before their eyes.

"Our robots could not help you before," said Barbara. "They can only see. As soon as we saw you, we came."