The Robot Brains [with w_cat] | страница 33

He frowned.

"It is a problem which is not easy to solve," he said.

Paul asked Christian to tell them what the Brains were doing in his time, and he told them all he knew.

"It is clear," said Paul when Christian had finished, "that the Brains are trying to change the course of history, to remake the world and be its masters. If they do it, the result will be-"

"the end of civilization," finished Barbara. "No star colonies. Only the Brains and their giant women. It's awful!"

Paul nodded.

"We must do something to stop them," he said. "But what?"

He looked at the time machine on the screen.

"It is necessary to understand how this machine operates," he said. "I must concentrate... I will leave you with Barbara now, Captain. Later we'll speak again. Excuse me now."

Paul left them.

Barbara said:

"If you like, I will tell you about our history since your time."

"I'll be interested to hear that," said Christian. "I want to know more about you and Paul, and this ship and the star colonies."

"The time period is great," she began, "so I can only mention the main events that have brought us where we are today. First you must know that there was a war - the last terrible war, when atomic radiation flooded the planet, and whole continents were dead.

"This was the time of the insects: they mutated and became very big. The people who remained alive now divided into two camps: the true men and the Brains. It was impossible to live on the surface. We saw hope in leaving the planet and flying into space to look for other worlds. The Brains decided to go underground.

"We built our spaceships and flew to other planets, but found that it was quite impossible to live on both Venus and Mars.

"Try to imagine Earth as it was then, ruined and radioactive, and full of giant insects. The Brains had already gone underground and organized their colony there. Even at that time they were already beginning to degenerate. And you have seen the results of that wrong idea. Knowledge alone is worthless - there must be wisdom to control it.

"Finally we succeeded in building powerful spaceships which could fly far into space and reach stars.

"We flew into space and organized the first star colonies. Since that time we have organized many colonies. We have studied a lot of worlds and got a lot of knowledge.

"We wanted to help the Brains, but they rejected our help and did not want to co-operate. By our standards they were dangerous. So we set up a base on the moon to watch over them. You must understand that it is quite impossible for us to kill them...