The Ultimate Man

by John E. Muller, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Ever since science began seriously investigating the potentials of electronics, man has toyed with the idea of creating robots. The dawn of the robot age has already broken. We have automatic telephone exchanges. We fly planes with robot pilots. We send self-sufficient instruments into the void to record and transmit cosmic information.

Frobisher was a brilliant theorist, years ahead of his time. He worked out a scheme that took long patient decades of planning. His great moment came. The robots were a success. Frobisher was a kindly old man. There was nothing evil in his plans. But the world is not entirely inhabited by kindly old men with high visions. Someone else got hold of the plans and the robots embarked on a career of international crime and pillage.

Despite his pacifist ideals, the old professor tried to combat the evil which he had unwittingly released . . . the results were staggering.

Release date: December 19, 2013

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

Writing as Bron Fane

Blue Juggernaut

Last Man on Earth

Nemesis

Rodent Mutation

Softly by Moonlight

Somewhere Out There

Suspension

The Intruders

The Macabre Ones

U.F.O. 517

Unknown Destiny

Writing as John E. Muller

A 1000 Years On

Beyond the Void

Beyond Time

Crimson Planet

Dark Continuum

Forbidden Planet

Infinity Machine

Mark of the Beast

Micro Infinity

Orbit One

Out of the Night

Perilous Galaxy

Phenomena X

Reactor XK9

Special Mission

Spectre of Darkness

Survival Project

The Day the World Died

The Exorcists

The Eye of Karnak

The Man From Beyond

The Man Who Conquered Time

The Mind Makers

The Negative Ones

The Return of Zeus

The Ultimate Man

The Uninvited

The Venus Venture

The X-Machine

Uranium 235

Vengeance of Siva

Writing as Karl Zeigfried

Android

Atomic Nemesis

Barrier 346

Escape to Infinity

Gods of Darkness

No Way Back

Projection Infinity

Radar Alert

The Girl from Tomorrow

The World That Never Was

Walk Through Tomorrow

World of the Future

World of Tomorrow

Zero Minus X

Writing as L. P. Kenton

Destination Moon

Writing as Lee Barton

The Planet Seekers

The Shadow Man

The Unseen

Writing as Leo Brett

Black Infinity

Exit Humanity

Face in the Night

From Realms Beyond

March of the Robots

Mind Force

Nightmare

Power Sphere

The Alien Ones

The Faceless Planet

The Forbidden

The Immortals

The Microscopic Ones

They Never Come Back

Writing as Lionel Roberts

Cyclops in the Sky

Dawn of the Mutants

Flame Goddess

The Face of X

The In-World

The Last Valkyrie

The Synthetic Ones

Time Echo

Writing as Neil Thanet

Beyond the Veil

The Man Who Came Back

Writing as Pel Torro

Beyond the Barrier of Space (AKA Formula 29X)

Exiled in Space

Force 97X

Frozen Planet

Galaxy 666

Legion of the Lost

Man of Metal

Space No Barrier

The Face of Fear

The Last Astronaut

The Phantom Ones

The Return

The Strange Ones

The Timeless Ones

Through The Barrier

World of the Gods

Writing as R. L. Fanthorpe

Alien from the Stars

Asteroid Man

Doomed World

Fiends

Flame Mass

Hand of Doom

Hyperspace

Negative Minus

Neuron World

Out of the Darkness

Satellite

Space Fury

Space-Borne

The Golden Chalice

The Triple Man

The Unconfined

The Waiting World

The Watching World

Writing as Thornton Bell

Space Trap

Writing as Trebor Thorpe

Five Faces of Fear

Lightning World

Writing as Victor La Salle

Menace from Mercury

Interference

Mike Harris and Clem Elliott were radio enthusiasts. ‘Enthusiasts’ was hardly the word. They were radio fanatics! Every spare moment they spent among their equipment in their electronic-cum-workshop. They had made and designed; built and re-built; stripped down and reconstructed every possible and conceivable type of set.

Their bench was littered with rectifiers, frequency by-pass condensers, aerials, volume controls, coupled circuits, condensers, anode resistors, and hundreds of other electrical bric-a-brac. Amid the confusion lay delicate transistors and sheets of printed circuits. A wild disarray of hammers, screwdrivers, pliers and electrical soldering irons in clamps and racks, completed the effect.

Mike Harris and Clem Elliott were enjoying themselves. They were men who believed that the proper raison d’etre of all work for which a salary was paid, was to enable a man to enjoy his leisure time.

They lived for their leisure. Leisure was radio construction. Amateur wireless work. Some of their stuff was old-fashioned hopelessly old-fashioned. They liked building old-fashioned sets because it brought an air of nostalgia for the pioneer days of the two and three valve masterpieces that had delighted their grandfathers.

They settled down to what was to be one of their usual, pleasant evenings. Their discussion was purely ‘shop’, and ‘shop’ to them was radio. Radio, electronics and all that went with it.

Mike looked up suddenly from his soldering iron and laid the delicate components back on the bench with a puzzled frown.

“Clem …?” His voice held a query.

“Yes” grunted Elliott, “Wassamarrer?” He always ran his syllables together as though joints between words were as obnoxious to him as joints between points in a circuit.

Mike Harris cocked his head on one side, like an inquisitive bird—listening …

“There’s something wrong with that set running in the background.”

Their old superhet was running quietly. It had a fine reception and a clear, accurate tone. A pre-VHF model, it was nonetheless one of their chief prides and joys. They stopped work and sat back in silence, listening.

“You’re definitely right” sand Clem. “There is something wrong, Mike.”

It was the work of a moment for their eager hands to seize it, and five minutes later its innermost secrets were naked to their gaze on the bench.

They checked and re-checked. They spent most of the evening on it. By they failed completely to get rid of the interference.

“The old beggar’s picking something up from somewhere,” decided Clem. “It’s not in the set at all! It’s an outside interference source. Get the detector going.”

The ‘detector’ was a device of their own contrivance. A modification of the delicate instrument used by the Post Office engineers on their search for pirate receivers. The detector gave a directional ‘fix’ on the beam of the interference source. It wavered uncertainly for a few seconds and then, as they turned up the sensitivity control, the direction indicator settled itself down. “That looks like being it,” said Harris.

“Agreed,” said Elliott. “Definitely agreed.” He looked at his watch. “It’s getting on for nine o’clock, it’s a bit late to ask somebody to turn off their vacuum cleaner, isn’t it?”

“How do we know it is a vacuum cleaner? It could be almost anything. I’ve never seen any interference quite like this before,” he said thoughtfully, stroking a chin which was a prominent feature of his physiognomy. “I don’t like it very much! I don’t like interference that I can’t trace.”

“Well, we’ve traced it all right!”

“Yes—but you know what I mean!” expostulated his friend. “We’ve traced the direction, but what about the source. That’s not a vacuum cleaner flash. It’s not a faulty ‘fridge. It seems as if somebody has some kind of ‘field’ in operation, quite a powerful field. I’m damned if I can understand it!”

“This has all the makings of a first-class mystery,” said Mike.

“It certainly has!” agreed Elliott.

“Well what are we waiting for?” said Harris.

“It’s a bit late,” protested Clem.

“Late be damned,” said Harris! “I can’t settle down to anything else while this mystery remains unsolved. Come on let’s go out and do something about it!”

“In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose,” said Clem. “All right then. Let’s go and see what we can find.”

The Hidden Laboratory

Their detector gear had been able to give them a fair idea of distance as well as direction, and from their reading of the dials it was certainly not more than three miles from their own workshop.

“Bit queer,” said Mike.

“Dashed queer,” agreed Clem.

And as courageously as Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee about to embark on their battle, the two radio amateurs set off on foot to discover the source of the interference.

Holding their battery-operated detector carefully in its haversack in front of them they set off through the darkness of the warm Spring evening. ‘Darkness’ is too strong a term to use for that soft, opalescent Spring light which transfigures and transmogrifies the world into a fairyland of soft, sombre shadow …

They reached the end of the road and found that their indicator beam was directing them across a field.

Crossing a field—a strange field—which neither of them could ever recall walking across before, though they had lived in the village for many years, can be a hazardous undertaking for a man used to pavements, even in broad daylight. But at night it is not without its element of danger. It is, in fact, frought with sudden pitfalls, and unexpected problems.

It was Elliott who had the misfortune to walk into the electric fence with which the worthy farmer was preventing his cattle from overstuffing themselves upon fresh, tender young Spring pasturage. The unlucky radio amateur let out a yell, and leapt a foot in the air.

“What the devil’s wrong?” inquired his friend irascibly.

“You’d ruddy well know, if you’d touched the blasted fence!” exploded Clem.

It was all Harris could do to confine and restrain his laughter. The sight of Clem Elliott’s by no-means-slim figure bouncing up into the air like a partridge that had just received a blast from a 12 bore was one of the most comical things that Mike Harris had seen for some weeks. He could not, in fact, remember having seen Clem move so swiftly since the day when the aforementioned Mr. Elliott had inadvertently rested his ample posterior upon a hot soldering iron! He had then given every indication that he was attempting the word high jump record. However, it was by no means a laughing matter, for in his efforts to disentangle himself from the electric fence Clem had almost dropped the detector.

“I think you’d better give me that thing, before you have any more accidents,” said Mike good-naturedly.

“If you’d been carrying the so-and-so detector in the first place,” snorted Clem, “I should have been able to look where I was going, and I wouldn’t have walked into the perishing fence! Here, you have it!”

Mike adjusted the strap of the haversack around his neck and they continued on their way, if not exactly rejoicing by no means miserable. This was something of a lark. It was an adventure, and life was all too dull and all too monotonous as far as these two radio amateurs were concerned.

It seemed as though carrying the detector produced some kind of jinx, for they had taken barely another dozen paces when the luckless Harris disappeared down an incline. Disappeared with such suddenness and thoroughness that for a moment Clem was of the opinion that his colleague had been spirited away by supernatural forces.

By the time Mike had emerged from the ditch both the radio enthusiasts were in some considerable doubt and alarm about the further serviceability of their detector, but after three quite exhaustive tests they were relieved to find that the needle was still swinging unerringly into its accustomed place, and that all was well.

“We must be getting somewhere near it,” said Elliott with a rather mournful tone to his voice.

“I hope so,” said Mike wringing out his trouser bottoms. “This may be Spring. and the water is far from cold, but it is as wet as ever! There is very little to choose, old boy, between warm wetness, and cold wetness! The former rapidly becomes the latter, even on a Spring evening!”

“Well, do you want to go back and get changed?” asked Clem.

“No, I don’t think so,” answered Mike, “I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about tracking this thing to its logical conclusion. If there’s one thing I hate it’s a job half done, a circuit half traced, a valve half-checked.”

“I know exactly how you feel. A stickler for accuracy. Perfectionist to the last. One of the things I admire about you, me dear old fruit,” said Clem. “All right, then, if you’re bent upon seeing this mission through to its logical conclusion, let’s go ahead and conclude it.”

They bashed on—field after field.

“You’re sure we got the distance right?” Mike asked more than once.

Feld after field.

“I hope we did,” countered Clem.

“Do you think we could have disturbed it in some rather odd way,” said Mike. “So that this distance finder isn’t working even though the direction finder is … Could the intensity detector be at fault? Without disturbing the directional locator?”

“Well that’s a point, I agree,” answered Ell. . .