"Shut up,” snarled Fife. “He'll talk or we'll tear him to pieces. Go on, D'quar, tear him!"
Horne shook his head. “You're smart enough, Fife, but you don't know men. This one's all angry and nerved up to die and he isn't going to tell us anything. Why? Because he figures he'll die anyway and so the hell with us. On the other hand, if he had a choice—"
"What kind of a choice?"
"A choice of life or death. If he doesn't talk, he dies. If he does talk, he lives. Don't be stubborn, Fife. What's one Vellae against a chance for home and freedom?"
Fife looked around at the others.
Lurgh awkwardly shifted his giant bulk and said hesitantly, “I think the human is right."
There were no dissenting voices.
For the second time, Fife mastered himself. “We agree, then. If the man talks, he lives."
D'quar sighed, as with regret, and removed his hand.
Horne said to the guard, “Well?"
He watched while the man's hard resolve crumbled away now that its foundation was removed. There was nothing, he thought, more weakening than hope.
"I can start you off easy,” Horne said, “by telling you we know Ardric is alive. We were fighting him only a day or two ago."
"Fighting?” the guard said. “They kept that secret enough. I knew Ardric was gone—"
He took a deep breath and plunged.
"Ardric has been working in the Project ever since he came back to Skereth."
A savage thrill, almost of triumph, sprang up in Horne. He looked at the others and said in a thin harsh voice like a cutting blade, “We won't have to go to Rillah."
"Right here in the Project?” said Fife. “Doing what?"
"Well.” said the man, “he's primarily a spaceman and doesn't know a thing about the Project, but he is used to giving orders. So his father put him in charge of the whole Project guard. Now he tells us how to do the work we've been doing for years."
Fife was figuring time. Finally he said grudingly, “We all escaped before that, so you may be telling the truth."
"I think he is,” said Horne. “If a man wanted to hide for a while, a man who was supposed to be dead, where would he find a better place than this?"
He bent down beside the guard. “I want Ardric. How can I get to him?"
The man looked at him, startled by the cold intensity of his manner. “I don't think there is any way,” he said. “He lives and works in the Administration Center, the heart of the Project. Even if you wore my uniform you wouldn't have much chance to get near him, and even if you did they'd kill you before you could get away. These others—” He looked around at the aliens and shook his head. “No chance at all."
"Are you sure of that?” Horne said. “Think hard. And remember what depends on it."
Sweat came out on the man's face. He was more frightened now, when he had seen a glimmer of hope, than when he had been sure he was going to die.
"I don't know,” he said desperately. “Please, I can't tell you a way if there isn't one!"
"Try,” said Horne. “Take plenty of time."
The man looked around, trapped and despairing. His eyes fell on Yso and his lips half parted as though he were going to make an appeal to her, but then he seemed to recognize her as Morivenn's daughter and the hope in his eyes died.
Fife sauntered a step closer. The aliens began to edge in, and D'quar stood absently looking down at his own talons, and all the unhuman faces stared in a hungry way. Horne could guess what the guard was feeling, as he looked up at those unhuman faces and thought of how these slaves had been treated.
The man's face became agonized with effort, and his voice came in a rattling rush.
"If you go down through the access galleries you'll meet other guards, and you'll have to pass through many levels where work is still going on and there are even more guards to watch over the slaves. So that's impossible. You just couldn't get past without being seen and challenged. So the only possible way there might be would be if you went through the Project itself—"
"Behind the doors?"
"Yes, but listen, if you got all the way to a main-ganglion relay station and from there to the control center in Administration, there would still be only a handful of you against the Project guards, and any slave caught in Administration would be shot on sight. So there isn't any way I can see—"
"Just a minute,” Horne said. “Main ganglion? What's that? What are the Vellae building in this mountain?"
An expression of haunting fear crept into the man's face against his will but too strong to be denied.
"A brain,” he said. “A huge, great brain."
CHAPTER XIII
For a minute there was complete silence in the gallery. Then Fife said, wonderingly, “A brain? A living, thinking brain?"
"Not living, like that,” said the guard. “Its a giant electronic computer, one of those that can calculate so far beyond human powers that they're called ‘brains.’ This one is the biggest there ever was."
Yso said slowly, “No wonder they killed my father. No wonder they'd kill anybody who tried to get Skereth into the Federation."
She looked desperately from Horne to Ewan and then to the aliens and Fife's clever unhuman face.
"We thought it was just their profits and power they were afraid of losing, but it's more. My father thought so and he was right. If Skereth entered the Federation, the Vellae leaders couldn't hope to hide what they're doing here. They'd go to prison for it as a menace to the peace of the whole galactic community."
Fife shook his head. “But why?"
Ewan said grimly, “Federation law forbids any world or any government or any private interest to construct an electronic calculating machine of more than a certain capability. They can have as many brains as they need to conduct their business, but they must not be linked together, and they must not exceed the fixed limit. If they do, the Federation considers it an act of war. It will take punitive action against any world, in the Federation or out of it, that endangers the rest of the galaxy by building such a dangerous thing."
The full significance of what the guard had said more or less escaped Horne, who was a spaceman and not much concerned with the complexities of galactic law outside his own sphere. But he was impressed by the reactions of Yso and Ewan, who were openly horror-struck. And he remembered talk about past trouble with such brains.
Fe asked, “Why is it so dangerous? A weapon I could understand, but an electronic brain…"
"It is a weapon,” Ewan said. “Potentially, the most dangerous of all.” He paused, as though searching for a way to explain. “Look, a spear is an extension of a man's hand and far more dangerous, isn't it? Well, an electronic brain is an extension of a man's mind — really the combined minds of many men."
That was clear enough. Horne nodded, and Ewan went on. “Theoretically, it could be extended to such proportions that the men who controlled it would be practically invincible. They would have all weapons, all strategy, all propaganda, all psychology, ready for instant use. One whole section of the brain this large could, for instance, be put to working out new equations for advanced weapons systems, leaving the rest of it free to solve the problems of attack on all levels, figure the probability curve of the enemy's movements, everything. And all the time new data would be added, making the brain even more powerful. I don't say it could never be smashed, but it would be a tough proposition, and there wouldn't be much left of the planet after it was over."
He clenched his hands and beat them gently together in a gesture of sheer desperation.
"If we don't succeed here — if we don't manage somehow to get proof to the Federation government — Skereth and probably this whole part of the galaxy will be involved in such a war that—"