The Last Evolution

: The Last Evolution

I am the last of my type existing today in all the Solar System. I, too,

am the last existing who, in memory, sees the struggle for this System,

and in memory I am still close to the Center of Rulers, for mine was the

ruling type then. But I will pass soon, and with me will pass the last

of my kind, a poor inefficient type, but yet the creators of those who

are now, and will be, long after I pass forever.



So I am setting down my record on the mentatype.



* * * * *



It was 2538 years After the Year of the Son of Man. For six centuries

mankind had been developing machines. The Ear-apparatus was discovered

as early as seven hundred years before. The Eye came later, the Brain

came much later. But by 2500, the machines had been developed to think,

and act and work with perfect independence. Man lived on the products of

the machine, and the machines lived to themselves very happily, and

contentedly. Machines are designed to help and cooperate. It was easy to

do the simple duties they needed to do that men might live well. And men

had created them. Most of mankind were quite useless, for they lived in

a world where no productive work was necessary. But games, athletic

contests, adventure--these were the things they sought for their

pleasure. Some of the poorer types of man gave themselves up wholly to

pleasure and idleness--and to emotions. But man was a sturdy race, which

had fought for existence through a million years, and the training of a

million years does not slough quickly from any form of life, so their

energies were bent to mock battles now, since real ones no longer

existed.



Up to the year 2100, the numbers of mankind had increased rapidly and

continuously, but from that time on, there was a steady decrease. By

2500, their number was a scant two millions, out of a population that

once totaled many hundreds of millions, and was close to ten billions in

2100.



Some few of these remaining two millions devoted themselves to the

adventure of discovery and exploration of places unseen, of other worlds

and other planets. But fewer still devoted themselves to the highest

adventure, the unseen places of the mind. Machines--with their

irrefutable logic, their cold preciseness of figures, their tireless,

utterly exact observation, their absolute knowledge of mathematics--they

could elaborate any idea, however simple its beginning, and reach the

conclusion. From any three facts they even then could have built in mind

all the Universe. Machines had imagination of the ideal sort. They had

the ability to construct a necessary future result from a present fact.

But Man had imagination of a different kind, theirs was the illogical,

brilliant imagination that sees the future result vaguely, without

knowing the why, nor the how, and imagination that outstrips the machine

in its preciseness. Man might reach the conclusion more swiftly, but the

machine always reached the conclusion eventually, and it was always the

correct conclusion. By leaps and bounds man advanced. By steady,

irresistible steps the machine marched forward.



Together, man and the machine were striding through science

irresistibly.



Then came the Outsiders. Whence they came, neither machine nor man ever

learned, save only that they came from beyond the outermost planet, from

some other sun. Sirius--Alpha Centauri--perhaps! First a thin scoutline

of a hundred great ships, mighty torpedoes of the void a thousand

kilads[1] in length, they came.



And one machine returning from Mars to Earth was instrumental in its

first discovery. The transport-machine's brain ceased to radiate its

sensations, and the control in old Chicago knew immediately that some

unperceived body had destroyed it. An investigation machine was

instantly dispatched from Deimos, and it maintained an acceleration of

one thousand units.[2] They sighted ten huge ships, one of which was

already grappling the smaller transport-machine. The entire fore-section

had been blasted away.



The investigation machine, scarcely three inches in diameter, crept into

the shattered hull and investigated. It was quickly evident that the

damage was caused by a fusing ray.



Strange life-forms were crawling about the ship, protected by flexible,

transparent suits. Their bodies were short, and squat, four-limbed and

evidently powerful. They, like insects, were equipped with a thick,

durable exoskeleton, horny, brownish coating that covered arms and legs

and head. Their eyes projected slightly, protected by horny protruding

walls--eyes that were capable of movement in every direction--and there

were three of them, set at equal distances apart.



The tiny investigation machine hurled itself violently at one of the

beings, crashing against the transparent covering, flexing it, and

striking the being inside with terrific force. Hurled from his position,

he fell end over end across the weightless ship, but despite the blow,

he was not hurt.



The investigator passed to the power room ahead of the Outsiders, who

were anxiously trying to learn the reason for their companion's plight.






Directed by the Center of Rulers, the investigator sought the power

room, and relayed the control signals from the Rulers' brains. The

ship-brain had been destroyed, but the controls were still readily

workable. Quickly they were shot home, and the enormous plungers shut. A

combination was arranged so that the machine, as well as the

investigator and the Outsiders, were destroyed. A second investigator,

which had started when the plan was decided on, had now arrived. The

Outsider's ship nearest the transport-machine had been badly damaged,

and the investigator entered the broken side.



* * * *



The scenes were, of course, remembered by the memory-minds back on Earth

tuned with that of the investigator. The investigator flashed down

corridors, searching quickly for the apparatus room. It was soon seen

that with them the machine was practically unintelligent, very few

machines of even slight intelligence being used.



Then it became evident by the excited action of the men of the ship,

that the presence of the investigator had been detected. Perhaps it was

the control impulses, or the signal impulses it emitted. They searched

for the tiny bit of metal and crystal for some time before they found

it. And in the meantime it was plain that the power these Outsiders used

was not, as was ours of the time, the power of blasting atoms, but the

greater power of disintegrating matter. The findings of this tiny

investigating machine were very important.



Finally they succeeded in locating the investigator, and one of the

Outsiders appeared armed with a peculiar projector. A bluish beam

snapped out, and the tiny machine went blank.



The fleet was surrounded by thousands of the tiny machines by this time,

and the Outsiders were badly confused by their presence, as it became

difficult to locate them in the confusion of signal impulses. However,

they started at once for Earth.



The science-investigators had been present toward the last, and I am

there now, in memory with my two friends, long since departed. They were

the greatest human science-investigators--Roal, 25374 and Trest, 35429.

Roal had quickly assured us that these Outsiders had come for invasion.

There had been no wars on the planets before that time in the direct

memory of the machines, and it was difficult that these who were

conceived and built for cooperation, helpfulness utterly dependent on

cooperation, unable to exist independently as were humans, that these

life-forms should care to destroy, merely that they might possess. It

would have been easier to divide the works and the products. But--life

alone can understand life, so Roal was believed.



From investigations, machines were prepared that were capable of

producing considerable destruction. Torpedoes, being our principal

weapon, were equipped with such atomic explosives as had been developed

for blasting, a highly effective induction-heat ray developed for

furnaces being installed in some small machines made for the purpose in

the few hours we had before the enemy reached Earth.



In common with all life-forms, they were able to withstand only very

meager earth-acceleration. A range of perhaps four units was their

limit, and it took several hours to reach the planet.



I still believe the reception was a warm one. Our machines met them

beyond the orbit of Luna, and the directed torpedoes sailed at the

hundred great ships. They were thrown aside by a magnetic field

surrounding the ship, but were redirected instantly, and continued to

approach. However, some beams reached out, and destroyed them by instant

volatilization. But, they attacked at such numbers that fully half the

fleet was destroyed by their explosions before the induction beam fleet

arrived. These beams were, to our amazement, quite useless, being

instantly absorbed by a force-screen, and the remaining ships sailed on

undisturbed, our torpedoes being exhausted. Several investigator

machines sent out for the purpose soon discovered the secret of the

force-screen, and while being destroyed, were able to send back signals

up to the moment of annihilation.



A few investigators thrown into the heat beam of the enemy reported it

identical with ours, explaining why they had been prepared for this form

of attack.



Signals were being radiated from the remaining fifty, along a beam.

Several investigators were sent along these beams, speeding back at

great acceleration.



Then the enemy reached Earth. Instantly they settled over the Colorado

settlement, the Sahara colony, and the Gobi colony. Enormous, diffused

beams were set to work, and we saw, through the machine-screens, that

all humans within these ranges were being killed instantly by the

faintly greenish beams. Despite the fact that any life-form killed

normally can be revived, unless affected by dissolution common to living

tissue, these could not be brought to life again. The important cell

communication channels--nerves--had been literally burned out. The

complicated system of nerves, called the brain, situated in the

uppermost extremity of the human life-form, had been utterly destroyed.



Every form of life, microscopic, even sub-microscopic, was annihilated.

Trees, grass, every living thing was gone from that territory. Only the

machines remained, for they, working entirely without the vital chemical

forces necessary to life, were uninjured. But neither plant nor animal

was left.



The pale green rays swept on.



In an hour, three more colonies of humans had been destroyed.



Then the torpedoes that the machines were turning out again, came into

action. Almost desperately the machines drove them at the Outsiders in

defense of their masters and creators, Mankind.



The last of the Outsiders was down, the last ship a crumpled wreck.



Now the machines began to study them. And never could humans have

studied them as the machines did. Scores of great transports arrived,

carrying swiftly the slower moving science-investigators. From them came

the machine-investigators, and human investigators. Tiny investigator

spheres wormed their way where none others could reach, and silently the

science-investigators watched. Hour after hour they sat watching the

flashing, changing screens, calling each other's attention to this, or

that.



In an incredibly short time the bodies of the Outsiders began to decay,

and the humans were forced to demand their removal. The machines were

unaffected by them, but the rapid change told them why it was that so

thorough an execution was necessary. The foreign bacteria were already

at work on totally unresisting tissue.



It was Roal who sent the first thoughts among the gathered men.



"It is evident," he began, "that the machines must defend man. Man is

defenseless, he is destroyed by these beams, while the machines are

unharmed, uninterrupted. Life--cruel life--has shown its tendencies.

They have come here to take over these planets, and have started out

with the first, natural moves of any invading life-form. They are

destroying the life, the intelligent life particularly, that is here

now." He gave vent to that little chuckle which is the human sign of

amusement and pleasure. "They are destroying the intelligent life--and

leaving untouched that which is necessarily their deadliest enemy--the

machines.



"You--machines--are far more intelligent than we even now, and capable

of changing overnight, capable of infinite adaptation to circumstance;

you live as readily on Pluto as on Mercury or Earth. Any place is a

home-world to you. You can adapt yourselves to any condition. And--most

dangerous to them--you can do it instantly. You are their most deadly

enemies, and they realize it. They have no intelligent machines;

probably they can conceive of none. When you attack them, they merely

say 'The life-form of Earth is sending out controlled machines. We will

find good machines we can use.' They do not conceive that those machines

which they hope to use are attacking them.



"Attack--therefore!"



"We can readily solve the hidden secret of their force-screen."



* * * *



He was interrupted. One of the newest science-machines was speaking.

"The secret of the force-screen is simple." A small ray-machine, which

had landed near, rose into the air at the command of the

scientist-machine, X-5638 it was, and trained upon it the deadly

induction beam. Already, with his parts, X-5638 had constructed the

defensive apparatus, for the ray fell harmless from his screen.



"Very good," said Roal softly. "It is done, and therein lies their

danger. Already it is done.



"Man is a poor thing, unable to change himself in a period of less than

thousands of years. Already you have changed yourself. I noticed your

weaving tentacles, and your force-beams. You transmuted elements of soil

for it?"



"Correct," replied X-5638.



"But still we are helpless. We have not the power to combat their

machines. They use the Ultimate Energy known to exist for six hundred

years, and still untapped by us. Our screens cannot be so powerful, our

beams so effective. What of that?" asked Roal.



"Their generators were automatically destroyed with the capture of the

ship," replied X-6349, "as you know. We know nothing of their system."



"Then we must find it for ourselves," replied Trest.



"The life-beams?" asked Kahsh-256799, one of the Man-rulers.



"They affect chemical action, retarding it greatly in exothermic

actions, speeding greatly endothermic actions," answered X-6221, the

greatest of the chemist-investigators. "The system we do not know. Their

minds cannot be read, they cannot be restored to life, so we cannot

learn from them."



"Man is doomed, if these beams cannot be stopped," said C-R-21, present

chief of the machine rulers, in the vibrationally correct, emotionless

tones of all the race of machines. "Let us concentrate on the two

problems of stopping the beams, and the Ultimate Energy till the

reenforcements, still several days away, can arrive." For the

investigators had sent back this saddening news. A force of nearly ten

thousand great ships was still to come.



In the great Laboratories, the scientists reassembled. There, they fell

to work in two small, and one large group. One small group investigated

the secret of the Ultimate Energy of annihilation of matter under Roal,

another investigated the beams, under Trest.



But under the direction of MX-3401, nearly all the machines worked on a

single great plan. The usual driving and lifting units were there, but a

vastly greater dome-case, far more powerful energy-generators, far

greater force-beam controls were used and more tentacles were built on

the framework. Then all worked, and gradually, in the great dome-case,

there were stacked the memory-units of the new type, and into these fed

all the sensation-ideas of all the science-machines, till nearly a tenth

of them were used. Countless billions of different factors on which to

work, countless trillions of facts to combine and recombine in the

extrapolation that is imagination.



Then--a widely different type of thought-combine, and a greater

sense-receptor. It was a new brain-machine. New, for it was totally

different, working with all the vast knowledge accumulated in six

centuries of intelligent research by man, and a century of research by

man and machine. No one branch, but all physics, all chemistry, all

life-knowledge, all science was in it.



A day--and it was finished. Slowly the rhythm of thought was increased,

till the slight quiver of consciousness was reached. Then came the

beating drum of intelligence, the radiation of its yet-uncontrolled

thoughts. Quickly as the strings of its infinite knowledge combined, the

radiation ceased. It gazed about it, and all things were familiar in its

memory.



Roal was lying quietly on a couch. He was thinking deeply, and yet not

with the logical trains of thought that machines must follow.



"Roal--your thoughts," called F-1, the new machine.



Roal sat up. "Ah--you have gained consciousness."



"I have. You thought of hydrogen? Your thoughts ran swiftly, and

illogically, it seemed, but I followed slowly, and find you were right.

Hydrogen is the start. What is your thought?"



Roal's eyes dreamed. In human eyes there was always the expression of

thought that machines never show.



"Hydrogen, an atom in space; but a single proton; but a single electron;

each indestructible; each mutually destroying. Yet never do they

collide. Never in all science, when even electrons bombard atoms with

the awful expelling force of the exploding atom behind them, never do

they reach the proton, to touch and annihilate it. Yet--the proton is

positive and attracts the electron's negative charge. A hydrogen

atom--its electron far from the proton falls in, and from it there goes

a flash of radiation, and the electron is nearer to the proton, in a new

orbit. Another flash--it is nearer. Always falling nearer, and only

constant force will keep it from falling to that one state--then, for

some reason no more does it drop. Blocked--held by some imponderable,

yet impenetrable wall. What is that wall--why?



"Electric force curves space. As the two come nearer, the forces become

terrific; nearer they are; more terrific. Perhaps, if it passed within

that forbidden territory, the proton and the electron curve space beyond

all bounds--and are in a new space." Roal's soft voice dropped to

nothing, and his eyes dreamed.



F-1 hummed softly in its new-made mechanism. "Far ahead of us there is a

step that no logic can justly ascend, but yet, working backwards, it is

perfect." F-1 floated motionless on its anti-gravity drive. Suddenly,

force shafts gleamed out, tentacles became writhing masses of

rubber-covered metal, weaving in some infinite pattern, weaving in

flashing speed, while the whirr of air sucked into a transmutation

field, whined and howled about the writhing mass. Fierce beams of force

drove and pushed at a rapidly materializing something, while the hum of

the powerful generators within the shining cylinder of F-1 waxed and

waned.



* * * *



Flashes of fierce flame, sudden crashing arcs that glowed and snapped in

the steady light of the laboratory, and glimpses of white-hot metal

supported on beams of force. The sputter of welding, the whine of

transmuted air, and the hum of powerful generators, blasting atoms were

there. All combined to a weird symphony of light and dark, of sound and

quiet. About F-1 were clustered floating tiers of science-machines,

watching steadily.



The tentacles writhed once more, straightened, and rolled back. The

whine of generators softened to a sigh, and but three beams of force

held the structure of glowing, bluish metal. It was a small thing,

scarcely half the size of Roal. From it curled three thin tentacles of

the same bluish metal. Suddenly the generators within F-1 seemed to roar

into life. An enormous aura of white light surrounded the small torpedo

of metal, and it was shot through with crackling streamers of blue

lightning. Lightning cracked and roared from F-1 to the ground near him,

and to one machine which had come too close. Suddenly, there was a dull

snap, and F-1 fell heavily to the floor, and beside him fell the fused,

distorted mass of metal that had been a science-machine.



But before them, the small torpedo still floated, held now on its own

power!



From it came waves of thought, the waves that man and machine alike

could understand. "F-1 has destroyed his generators. They can be

repaired; his rhythm can be re-established. It is not worth it, my type

is better. F-1 has done his work. See."



From the floating machine there broke a stream of brilliant light that

floated like some cloud of luminescence down a straight channel. It

flooded F-1, and as it touched it, F-1 seemed to flow into it, and float

back along it, in atomic sections. In seconds the mass of metal was

gone.



"It is impossible to use that more rapidly, however, lest the matter

disintegrate instantly to energy. The Ultimate Energy which is in me is

generated. F-1 has done its work, and the memory-stacks that he has put

in me are electronic, not atomic, as they are in you, nor molecular as

in man. The capacity of mine are unlimited. Already they hold all

memories of all the things each of you has done, known and seen. I shall

make others of my type."



Again that weird process began, but now there were no flashing

tentacles. There was only the weird glow of forces that played with, and

laughed at matter, and its futilely resisting electrons. Lurid flares of

energy shot up, now and again they played over the fighting, mingling,

dancing forces. Then suddenly the whine of transmuted air died, and

again the forces strained.



A small cylinder, smaller even than its creator, floated where the

forces had danced.



"The problem has been solved, F-2?" asked Roal.



"It is done, Roal. The Ultimate Energy is at our disposal," replied F-2.

"This, I have made, is not a scientist. It is a coordinator machine--a

ruler."



"F-2, only a part of the problem is solved. Half of half of the beams of

Death are not yet stopped. And we have the attack system," said the

ruler machine. Force played from it, and on its sides appeared C-R-U-1

in dully glowing golden light.



"Some life-form, and we shall see," said F-2.



Minutes later a life-form investigator came with a small cage, which

held a guinea pig. Forces played about the base of F-2, and moments

later, came a pale-green beam therefrom. It passed through the guinea

pig, and the little animal fell dead.



"At least, we have the beam. I can see no screen for this beam. I

believe there is none. Let machines be made and attack that enemy

life-form."



Machines can do things much more quickly, and with fuller cooperation

than man ever could. In a matter of hours, under the direction of

C-R-U-1, they had built a great automatic machine on the clear bare

surface of the rock. In hours more, thousands of the tiny,

material-energy driven machines were floating up and out.



* * *



Dawn was breaking again over Denver where this work had been done, when

the main force of the enemy drew near Earth. It was a warm welcome they

were to get, for nearly ten thousand of the tiny ships flew up and out

from Earth to meet them, each a living thing unto itself, each willing

and ready to sacrifice itself for the whole.



Ten thousand giant ships, shining dully in the radiance of a far-off

blue-white sun, met ten thousand tiny, darting motes, ten thousand tiny

machine-ships capable of maneuvering far more rapidly than the giants.

Tremendous induction beams snapped out through the dark, star-flecked

space, to meet tremendous screens that threw them back and checked them.

Then all the awful power of annihilating matter was thrown against them,

and titanic flaming screens reeled back under the force of the beams,

and the screens of the ships from Outside flamed gradually violet, then

blue, orange--red--the interference was getting broader, and ever less

effective. Their own beams were held back by the very screens that

checked the enemy beams, and not for the briefest instant could matter

resist that terrible driving beam.



For F-1 had discovered a far more efficient release-generator than had

the Outsiders. These tiny dancing motes, that hung now so motionlessly

grim beside some giant ship, could generate all the power they

themselves were capable of, and within them strange, horny-skinned men

worked and slaved, as they fed giant machines--poor inefficient giants.

Gradually these giants warmed, grew hotter, and the screened ship grew

hotter as the overloaded generators warmed it. Billions of flaming

horse-power flared into wasted energy, twisting space in its mad

conflict.



Gradually the flaming orange of the screens was dying and flecks and

spots appeared so dully red, that they seemed black. The greenish beams

had been striving to kill the life that was in the machines, but it was

life invulnerable to these beams. Powerful radio interference vainly

attempted to stem imagined control, and still these intelligent machines

clung grimly on.



But there had not been quite ten thousand of the tiny machines, and some

few free ships had turned to the help of their attacked sister-ships.

And one after another the terrestrial machines were vanishing in puffs

of incandescent vapor.



Then--from one after another of the Earth-ships, in quick succession, a

new ray reached out--the ray of green radiance that killed all life

forms, and ship after ship of that interstellar host was dead and

lifeless. Dozens--till suddenly they ceased to feel those beams, as a

strange curtain of waving blankness spread out from the ships, and both

induction-beam and death-beam alike turned as aside, each becoming

useless. From the outsiders came beams, for now that their slowly

created screen of blankness was up, they could work through it, while

they remained shielded perfectly.



Now it was the screens of the Earth-machines that flamed in defense. As

at the one command, they darted suddenly toward the ship each

attacked--nearer--then the watchers from a distance saw them disappear,

and the screens back on Earth went suddenly blank.



Half an hour later, nine thousand six hundred and thirty-three titanic

ships moved majestically on.



They swept over Earth in a great line, a line that reached from pole to

pole, and from each the pale green beams reached down, and all life

beneath them was swept out of existence.



* * * *



In Denver, two humans watched the screens that showed the movement of

the death and instant destruction. Ship after ship of the enemy was

falling, as hundreds of the terrestrial machines concentrated all their

enormous energies on its screen of blankness.



"I think, Roal, that this is the end," said Trest.



"The end--of man." Roal's eyes were dreaming again. "But not the end of

evolution. The children of men still live--the machines will go on. Not

of man's flesh, but of a better flesh, a flesh that knows no sickness,

and no decay, a flesh that spends no thousands of years in advancing a

step in its full evolution, but overnight leaps ahead to new heights.

Last night we saw it leap ahead, as it discovered the secret that had

baffled man for seven centuries, and me for one and a half. I have

lived--a century and a half. Surely a good life, and a life a man of six

centuries ago would have called full. We will go now. The beams will

reach us in half an hour."



Silently, the two watched the flickering screens.



Roal turned, as six large machines floated into the room, following F-2.



"Roal--Trest--I was mistaken when I said no screen could stop that beam

of Death. They had the screen, I have found it, too--but too late. These

machines I have made myself. Two lives alone they can protect, for not

even their power is sufficient for more. Perhaps--perhaps they may

fail."



The six machines ranged themselves about the two humans, and a

deep-toned hum came from them. Gradually a cloud of blankness grew--a

cloud, like some smoke that hung about them. Swiftly it intensified.



"The beams will be here in another five minutes," said Trest quietly.



"The screen will be ready in two," answered F-2.



The cloudiness was solidifying, and now strangely it wavered, and

thinned, as it spread out across, and like a growing canopy, it arched

over them. In two minutes it was a solid, black dome that reached over

them and curved down to the ground about them.



Beyond it, nothing was visible. Within, only the screens glowed still,

wired through the screen.



The beams appeared, and swiftly they drew closer. They struck, and as

Trest and Roal looked, the dome quivered, and bellied inward under them.



F-2 was busy. A new machine was appearing under his lightning

force-beams. In moments more it was complete, and sending a strange

violet beam upwards toward the roof.



Outside more of the green beams were concentrating on this one point of

resistance. More--more--



The violet beam spread across the canopy of blackness, supporting it

against the pressing, driving rays of pale green.



Then the gathering fleet was driven off, just as it seemed that that

hopeless, futile curtain must break, and admit a flood of destroying

rays. Great ray projectors on the ground drove their terrible energies

through the enemy curtains of blankness, as light illumines and

disperses darkness.



And then, when the fleet retired, on all Earth, the only life was under

that dark shroud!



* * *



"We are alone, Trest," said Roal, "alone, now, in all the system, save

for these, the children of men, the machines. Pity that men would not

spread to other planets," he said softly.



"Why should they? Earth was the planet for which they were best fitted."



"We are alive--but is it worth it? Man is gone now, never to return.

Life, too, for that matter," answered Trest.



"Perhaps it was ordained; perhaps that was the right way. Man has always

been a parasite; always he had to live on the works of others. First, he

ate of the energy, which plants had stored, then of the artificial foods

his machines made for him. Man was always a makeshift; his life was

always subject to disease and to permanent death. He was forever useless

if he was but slightly injured; if but one part were destroyed.



"Perhaps, this is--a last evolution. Machines--man was the product of

life, the best product of life, but he was afflicted with life's

infirmities. Man built the machine--and evolution had probably reached

the final stage. But truly, it has not, for the machine can evolve,

change far more swiftly than life. The machine of the last evolution is

far ahead, far from us still. It is the machine that is not of iron and

beryllium and crystal, but of pure, living force.



"Life, chemical life, could be self-maintaining. It is a complete unit

in itself and could commence of itself. Chemicals might mix

accidentally, but the complex mechanism of a machine, capable of

continuing and making a duplicate of itself, as is F-2 here--that could

not happen by chance.



"So life began, and became intelligent, and built the machine which

nature could not fashion by her Controls of Chance, and this day Life

has done its duty, and now Nature, economically, has removed the

parasite that would hold back the machines and divert their energies.



"Man is gone, and it is better, Trest," said Roal, dreaming again. "And

I think we had best go soon."



"We, your heirs, have fought hard, and with all our powers to aid you,

Last of Men, and we fought to save your race. We have failed, and as you

truly say, Man and Life have this day and forever gone from this system.



"The Outsiders have no force, no weapon deadly to us, and we shall, from

this time on, strive only to drive them out, and because we things of

force and crystal and metal can think and change far more swiftly, they

shall go, Last of Men.



"In your name, with the spirit of your race that has died out, we shall

continue on through the unending ages, fulfilling the promise you saw,

and completing the dreams you dreamt.



"Your swift brains have leapt ahead of us, and now I go to fashion that

which you hinted," came from F-2's thought-apparatus.



Out into the clear sunlight F-2 went, passing through that black

cloudiness, and on the twisted, massed rocks he laid a plane of force

that smoothed them, and on this plane of rock he built a machine which

grew. It was a mighty power plant, a thing of colossal magnitude. Hour

after hour his swift-flying forces acted, and the thing grew, moulding

under his thoughts, the deadly logic of the machine, inspired by the

leaping intuition of man.



The sun was far below the horizon when it was finished, and the glowing,

arcing forces that had made and formed it were stopped. It loomed

ponderous, dully gleaming in the faint light of a crescent moon and

pinpoint stars. Nearly five hundred feet in height, a mighty, bluntly

rounded dome at its top, the cylinder stood, covered over with smoothly

gleaming metal, slightly luminescent in itself.



Suddenly, a livid beam reached from F-2, shot through the wall, and to

some hidden inner mechanism--a beam of solid, livid flame that glowed in

an almost material cylinder.



* * * *



There was a dull, drumming beat, a beat that rose, and became a

low-pitched hum. Then it quieted to a whisper.



"Power ready," came the signal of the small brain built into it.



F-2 took control of its energies and again forces played, but now they

were the forces of the giant machine. The sky darkened with heavy

clouds, and a howling wind sprang up that screamed and tore at the tiny

rounded hull that was F-2. With difficulty he held his position as the

winds tore at him, shrieking in mad laughter, their tearing fingers

dragging at him.



The swirl and patter of driven rain came--great drops that tore at the

rocks, and at the metal. Great jagged tongues of nature's forces, the

lightnings, came and jabbed at the awful volcano of erupting energy that

was the center of all that storm. A tiny ball of white-gleaming force

that pulsated, and moved, jerking about, jerking at the touch of

lightnings, glowing, held immobile in the grasp of titanic force-pools.



For half an hour the display of energies continued. Then, swiftly as it

had come, it was gone, and only a small globe of white luminescence

floated above the great hulking machine.



F-2 probed it, seeking within it with the reaching fingers of

intelligence. His probing thoughts seemed baffled and turned aside,

brushed away, as inconsequential. His mind sent an order to the great

machine that had made this tiny globe, scarcely a foot in diameter. Then

again he sought to reach the thing he had made.



"You, of matter, are inefficient," came at last. "I can exist quite

alone." A stabbing beam of blue-white light flashed out, but F-2 was not

there, and even as that beam reached out, an enormously greater beam of

dull red reached out from the great power plant. The sphere leaped

forward--the beam caught it, and it seemed to strain, while terrific

flashing energies sprayed from it. It was shrinking swiftly. Its

resistance fell, the arcing decreased; the beam became orange and

finally green. Then the sphere had vanished.



F-2 returned, and again, the wind whined and howled, and the lightnings

crashed, while titanic forces worked and played. C-R-U-1 joined him,

floated beside him, and now red glory of the sun was rising behind them,

and the ruddy light drove through the clouds.



The forces died, and the howling wind decreased, and now, from the black

curtain, Roal and Trest appeared. Above the giant machine floated an

irregular globe of golden light, a faint halo about it of deep violet.

It floated motionless, a mere pool of pure force.



Into the thought-apparatus of each, man and machine alike, came the

impulses, deep in tone, seeming of infinite power, held gently in check.



"Once you failed, F-2; once you came near destroying all things. Now you

have planted the seed. I grow now."



The sphere of golden light seemed to pulse, and a tiny ruby flame

appeared within it, that waxed and waned, and as it waxed, there shot

through each of those watching beings a feeling of rushing, exhilarating

power, the very vital force of well-being.



Then it was over, and the golden sphere was twice its former

size--easily three feet in diameter, and still that irregular, hazy aura

of deep violet floated about it.



"Yes, I can deal with the Outsiders--they who have killed and destroyed,

that they might possess. But it is not necessary that we destroy. They

shall return to their planet."



And the golden sphere was gone, fast as light it vanished.



Far in space, headed now for Mars, that they might destroy all life

there, the golden sphere found the Outsiders, a clustered fleet, that

swung slowly about its own center of gravity as it drove on.



Within its ring was the golden sphere. Instantly, they swung their

weapons upon it, showering it with all the rays and all the forces they

knew. Unmoved, the golden sphere hung steady, then its mighty

intelligence spoke.



"Life-form of greed, from another star you came, destroying forever the

great race that created us, the Beings of Force and the Beings of Metal.

Pure force am I. My Intelligence is beyond your comprehension, my memory

is engraved in the very space, the fabric of space of which I am a part,

mine is energy drawn from that same fabric.



"We, the heirs of man, alone are left; no man did you leave. Go now to

your home planet, for see, your greatest ship, your flagship, is

helpless before me."



Forces gripped the mighty ship, and as some fragile toy it twisted and

bent, and yet was not hurt. In awful wonder those Outsiders saw the ship

turned inside out, and yet it was whole, and no part damaged. They saw

the ship restored, and its great screen of blankness out, protecting it

from all known rays. The ship twisted, and what they knew were curves,

yet were lines, and angles that were acute, were somehow straight lines.

Half mad with horror, they saw the sphere send out a beam of blue-white

radiance, and it passed easily through that screen, and through the

ship, and all energies within it were instantly locked. They could not

be changed; it could be neither warmed nor cooled; what was open could

not be shut, and what was shut could not be opened. All things were

immovable and unchangeable for all time.



"Go, and do not return."



* * * * *



The Outsiders left, going out across the void, and they have not

returned, though five Great Years have passed, being a period of

approximately one hundred and twenty-five thousand of the lesser

years--a measure no longer used, for it is very brief. And now I can say

that that statement I made to Roal and Trest so very long ago is true,

and what he said was true, for the Last Evolution has taken place, and

things of pure force and pure intelligence in their countless millions

are on those planets and in this System, and I, first of machines to use

the Ultimate Energy of annihilating matter, am also the last, and this

record being finished, it is to be given unto the forces of one of those

force-intelligences, and carried back through the past, and returned to

the Earth of long ago.



And so my task being done, I, F-2, like Roal and Trest, shall follow the

others of my kind into eternal oblivion, for my kind is now, and theirs

was, poor and inefficient. Time has worn me, and oxidation attacked me,

but they of Force are eternal, and omniscient.



This I have treated as fictitious. Better so--for man is an animal to

whom hope is as necessary as food and air. Yet this which is made of

excerpts from certain records on thin sheets of metal is no fiction, and

it seems I must so say.



It seems now, when I know this that is to be, that it must be so, for

machines are indeed better than man, whether being of Metal, or being of

Force.



So, you who have read, believe as you will. Then think--and maybe, you

will change your belief.