TASK OF TAU
By J. Harvey Haggard
Tau was metal. Tau was chemical. Tau was
electrical. Yet Tau could face death like a man.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A gleaming binary swung in the blue sky, sending a moist warmth across the swaying fern-growths of the Fourteenth Planet. Feathered creatures of bright colors flashed through the underbrush and made noises there. A figure came stalking down through the shaded clearings, and small scaly bodies scurried out of sight, leaving ungainly tracks scrawled in the swamp mud.
Tau, the metal man, a mechanical half-sentient messenger from the far distant past, strode impassively along, not heeding the smaller creatures of the jungle. He had sighted the tiny habitable world from the distant depths of an outer galaxy, and had moored his space-ship in a clearing that was not distant.
He halted his berylite six-foot body in a leafy glade and let the wind play about his cold outer surface. The lens-cased inscrutable orbs in his head peered about, taking in the scene with photographic detail.
"Life! This is life!" he thought to himself. "This is the life the Master said I would find some day."
Though his memories were of a distant past, of a remote planet, and of the Master whose atoms might lie even now in the etheric dust, Tau remembered with perfect clarity. He could recall the aged countenance of the Master, the broad forehead, the jutting chin, and the determined undertone of his deep voice.