The Complete Stories (Page 223)

But she just said, "Well, look!" And there was a screw in her hand and an empty hole in the front of Junior’s case. She had removed it by hand.

Cliff said, "Holy Smoke!"

They were turning, all dozen screws. They were doing it by themselves, like little worms crawling out of their holes, turning round and round, then dropping out. I scrabbled them up and only one was left. It hung on for a while, the front panel sagging from it, till I reached out. Then the last screw dropped and the panel fell gently into my arms. I put it to one side.

Cliff said, "It did that on purpose. It heard us mention the blowtorch and gave up." His face is usually pink, but it was white then.

I was feeling a little queer myself. I said, "What’s it trying to hide?"

"I don’t know."

We bent before its open insides and for a while we just looked. I could hear Mary Ann’s toe begin to tap the floor again. I looked at my wrist watch and I had to admit to myself we didn’t have much time. In fact, we didn’t have any time left.

And then I said, "It’s got a diaphragm."

Cliff said, "Where?" and bent closer.

I pointed. "And a loud speaker."

"You didn’t put them in?"

"Of course I didn’t put them in. I ought to know what I put in. If I put it in, I’d remember."

"Then how did it get in?"

We were squatting and arguing. I said, "It made them itself, I suppose. Maybe it grows them. Look at that."

I pointed again. Inside the box at two different places, were coils of something that looked like thin garden hose, except that they were of metal. They spiraled tightly so that they lay flat. At the end of each coil, the metal divided into five or six thin filaments that were in little sub-spirals.

"You didn’t put those in either?"

"No, I didn’t put those in either."

"What are they?"

He knew what they were and I knew what they were. Something had to reach out to get materials for Junior to make parts for itself; something had to snake out for the telephone. I picked up the front panel and looked at it again. There were two circular bits of metal cut out and hinged so that they could swing forward and leave a hole for something to come through.

I poked a finger through one and held it up for Cliff to see, and said, "I didn’t put this in either."

Mary Ann was looking over my shoulder now, and without warning she reached out. I was wiping my fingers with a paper towel to get off the dust and grease and didn’t have time to stop her. I should have known Mary Ann, though; she’s always so anxious to help.

Anyway, she reached in to touch one of the-well, we might as well say it -tentacles. I don’t know if she actually touched them or not. Later on she claimed she hadn’t. But anyway, what happened then was that she let out a little yell and suddenly sat down and began rubbing her arm.

"The same one," she whimpered. "First you, and then that."

I helped her up. "It must have been a loose connection, Mary Ann. I’m sorry, but I told you-"

Cliff said, "Nuts! That was no loose connection. Junior’s just protecting itself."

I had thought the same thing, myself. I had thought lots of things. Junior was a new kind of machine. Even the mathematics that controlled it were different from anything anybody had worked with before. Maybe it had something no machine previously had ever had. Maybe it felt a desire to stay alive and grow. Maybe it would have a desire to make more machines until there were millions of them all over the earth, fighting with human beings for control.

I opened my mouth and Cliff must have known what I was going to say, because he yelled, "No. No, don’t say it!"

But I couldn’t stop myself. It just came out and I said, "Well, look, let’s disconnect Junior-What’s the matter?"

Cliff said bitterly, "Because he’s listening to what we say, you jackass. He heard about the blowtorch, didn’t he? I was going to sneak up behind it, but now it will probably electrocute me if I try."

Mary Ann was still brushing at the back of her dress and saying how dirty the floor was, even though I kept telling her I had nothing to do with that. I mean, it’s the janitor that makes the mud.

Anyway, she said, "Why don’t you put on rubber gloves and yank the cord out?"

I could see Cliff was trying to think of reasons why that wouldn’t work. He didn’t think of any, so he put on the rubber gloves and walked towards Junior.

I yelled, "Watch out!"

It was a stupid thing to say. He had to watch out; he had no choice. One of the tentacles moved and there was no doubt what they were now. It whirled out and drew a line between Cliff and the power cable. It remained there, vibrating a little with its six finger-tendrils splayed out. Tubes inside Junior were beginning to glow. Cliff didn’t try to go past that tentacle. He backed away and after a while, it spiraled inward again. He took off his rubber gloves.

"Bill," he said, "we’re not going to get anywhere. That’s a smarter gadget than we dreamed we could make. It was smart enough to use my voice as a model when it built its diaphragm. It may become smart enough to learn how to-" He looked over his shoulder, and whispered, "how to generate its own power and become self-contained.

"Bill, we’ve got to stop it, or someday someone will telephone the planet Earth and get the answer, ‘Honest, boss, there’s nobody here anywhere but us complicated thinking machines!’ "

"Let’s get in the police," I said. "We’ll explain. A grenade, or something-"

Cliff shook his head, "We can’t have anyone else find out. They’ll build other Juniors and it looks like we don’t have enough answers for that kind of a project after all."