"The orbit's absolutely synchronous," he disclosed. "We can keep the alien landing site under constant observation. And our position is additionally camouflaged by those peaks."
He used the scales of an abbreviated forearm to scratch his lower jaw. With all the authority vested within him as Chancellor of the Shoal, Adviser to the Curule Assembly and leader of the current expeditionary force, he directed the pilot to order gunnery practice.
Assemblyman Mittich swallowed incredulously. "But the aliens! Aren't we going to observe them? That's what we came for!"
"Not now." Vrausot waved him off. "Preparations first. Anyway, weknowthey're aggressive."
"We don't. That's what we have to establish."
The Chancellor shifted his tail from left to right. "We've observed their machines. They fight among themselves, don't they? And isn't it a fundamental fact of design that automatons are fashioned mainly after their creators, even in matters of temperament?"
"Yes," Mittich admitted. "But weinterferedwith those machines. We interrupted basic behavioral patterns. Our automatons, too, would show primitive social tendencies if the same thing happened to them."
Vrausot exposed a jagged array of teeth that conveyed his displeasure. "I'm in no mood for interference, although I might have expected only forensic exercise from the Leader of the Opposition."
"In that capacity, I'm here to offer suggestions." But it was more than that, Mittich reflected. The Assembly had been quite leery of the compromise plan. The Chancellor had wanted an awesome display of force; the Opposition, a try at peaceful contact.
They finally concurred in: observation, evaluation and application of forceonlyif required. And it was hoped that, on the expedition, the Chancellor and Assemblyman would restrain each other.
But how couldanyonerestrain Vrausot?
"Prepare for gunnery practice," the Chancellor directed.
"But," Kavula protested, "that will produce observable emissions beyond the concealment of our shield."
Disappointed, Vrausot leaned back upon his tail. "Very well, then—we'll go through the motions. Order a wet run."
Kavula relayed the order and scores of hatches swung open, baring to space the glistening intensifiers of high-powered weapons. The ship reverberated with the hiss-click articulation of military command and response.
Pivoting on his massive tail, Mittich went over to the teleview screen. "I have your permission, of course, to take a look at the alien vessel?"
"Suit yourself," the Chancellor grumbled.
The screen hunted out and steadied upon the alien ship.
"It's clean!" Mittich exclaimed. "They'renotarmed!"
"Nonsense," Vrausot said, coming over to see. "They've got to be. Why else would they come here?"
"The hull is sleek." The Assemblyman pointed with his long snout. "I see no gun-hatch outlines."
The Chancellor produced the Tzarean equivalent of a humorless laugh. "They're aliens, Mittich—with an alien technology. Perhaps we wouldn't even recognize their weapons if we saw them."
"But, as if they were hostile and furtive, would they have exposed themselves helplessly on that plain—like sittinguraphi?"
Vrausot's eyes intensified with resolution. "We're going to strike them—now! We're not going to wait and take the chance of having them slip from our grasp."
Appalled, the Assemblyman drew back. "But that's just what we'renotsupposed to do! We might touch off a war that will annihilate either or both of two cultures!"
"If we don't strike now it'll beourculture that will be annihilated. I wouldn't want that, Mittich. Just think of the glory and honor and tradition of conquest that would be lost forever. What we do here is being watched, indeed, by our ancestors who gave their lives in the final battle for total consolidation of the Tzarean Shoal!"
"But—"
"Our opportunity now is to live up to the finest military examples set by all Tzarean heroes who ever aimed an intensifier out of love for homeworld. Mittich—This is a time for empire!"
It was no use, the Assemblyman saw. Vrausot would have his way. He would wear his shining, imaginary medals and order his attack and bring doom to—oh, how many worlds? And the Curule Assembly could only give his leadership the support it would need after he presented them with thefait accompliof this treacherous deed.
"Kavula!" the Chancellor hissed. "Order the gunners—"
But Mittich nudged him in the back. "It could be a seine."
"I—what?"
"We may be swimming into a seine. Perhaps they're just toying with us—waiting to see if we are foolhardy enough to attack."
The scales above the Chancellor's eyes stood on edge as he pondered the ramifications of the other's suggestion. Finally, "We'll hold off a while, perhaps."
Mittich had put him off for a moment. But no gain against Vrausot, political or otherwise, was ever more than temporary.
The Assemblyman was jarred from speculation as one of his major scales split with aridity. He hurried off to his isotonic saline tank.
IV
Rested, although no nearer a definite plan for resubjugation of the telepuppet team, Stewart cautiously watched the robots from behind an outcropping. To this concealed vantage point he had led Carol, Director Randall and McAllister while the automatons had been occupied with recharging.
"You're going to try some more voice commands on the OC?" Carol's voice came softly through the earphones as she squirmed to find more comfort within the folds of her oversized sheath.
"We're not doinganything," Stewart said firmly, "until that thing is well occupied with transmission."
McAllister's boot came in contact with something hard and he bent down to inspect it. "Say, what's this?"
Randall went over to see. "A burnt-out telepuppet, obviously."
Stewart had a look too. "It's an Algae Detector. But, since there's no water around here, it hasn't had a chance to exercise its function. Electronic atrophy must have set in."
"It's riddled with drill holes," McAllister noted. "Looks like one of those other puppets worked it over."
Stewart examined the thing. The pilot was right.
"At leastoneof our robots seems to have overcome its inhibition against analyzing pure metal," Randall observed, prodding it.
"Or maybe something else has been around here," McAllister said.
The director looked up sharply.
"Something else? Like what?" Carol laughed at the pilot's unreasonable concern.
McAllister only hunched his bony shoulders.
It was not difficult for Stewart to see that McAllister was afraid. Neither the pilot nor Mortimer was generally known in the Bureau for his courage. That their apprehension had grown to visible proportions out there on this Godforsaken edge of infinity was merely an expected extension of their characters.
Rather, it was Randall's fear—Randall's and his own—that concerned Stewart. Both seemed incommunicable. Stewart's reticence was involuntary, stemming as it did from his inability to find words for his incomprehensible dread. And he wondered whether the director's fear, too, was that inexpressible.
He picked up a clod of soil and crumbled it in his gloved hand, as though symbolizing his anxious desire to come to grips with whatever it was that hid behind a veil in his mind.
Randall lowered himself on his haunches. "Don't we have anyemergencymeans of bringing that machine under control?"
"Oh, there are a couple of tricks. Manhandling it is one."
Carol hugged her knees and laughed skeptically. "Thatthing?"
"There's a recessed deactivation switch in its lower section. All I have to do is get my hand on it."
"And allithas to do," she retorted dubiously, "is get one of its fifty-pound vises onyou."
She seized his hand and, through two layers of rubberized material, he sensed the unsteadiness of her grip. "Do be careful, Dave."
He was impressed. It wasn't often she allowed her more serious nature to show through candidly.
She rose suddenly and turned to face a distant mountain range.
Randall tensed. "Yes, Carol—what is it?"
Profuse light from the primary etched lines of concern on her brow. "I'm sensing electronic spill-off from somewhere up in those peaks—perhaps beyond."
Randall's breath rasped in the earphones. But he only said, "Spurious stuff. Reflections caused by a dense magnetic field can throw you off like that, you know."
She nodded—not enthusiastically, however.
Stewart glanced at the director, who looked swiftly away. But their eyes had met for an instant and, in Randall's, Stewart wondered whether he hadn't detected something cunning, elusive. Or was it just the same nameless fear that he, himself, felt.
"There it goes!" McAllister exclaimed. "The OC's getting ready to transmit!"
Elbows splayed along the ridge, Carol watched the huge machine steadying its parabolic discs on a spot close to the horizon.
"See if you can pick up some of the spill-off," Stewart urged.
She waved for silence. "I'm beginning to get it now."
"Can you pinpoint the frequency?"
"Just a notch about one thirty-six point two MCs."
"On the nose, isn't it?" Randall asked.
"Close enough. Howarethe signals, Carol?"
"They seem shipshape, well modulated, crammed with data. I can even read some bits having to do with oxygen—plenty of it—in that cave over there, I believe." She pointed, then glanced at Stewart. "There's no malfunctioning at all!"
He retrieved his transmitter and switched from MCW to CW. "That simplifies our task. When we re-establish control, all we'll have to do is reorient the OC."
Randall walked several feet away, kicked a stone, glanced up at the sky and returned. "What now?"
Stewart retuned his transmitter. "Penultimate emergency procedure. I'm going to come down with both heels on the frequency at which it received code signals from the relay base."
"But can you give itcodedcommands?"
"I'm just going to lock the sending key on a steady impulse. It's a 'stop-everything' order." He hit the lever.
Carol winced. "Ouch. I wasn't ready for that."
"What's it doing now?" he demanded.
"Still transmitting. No interruption."
He released the key. "Well that exhausts our bag of tricks. We'll have to do it by hand."
Just then Carol's amused laughter tinkled in the earphones. "Why, that harebrain machine thinks it's God!"
Randall started. "What?"
"I'm having a peek at its PM&R pack spill-off. It's lord and master of the universe! There's only one thing worthy of touching its pedal pad—the puppet barge. That's because the barge, being metal too, isa totem!"
The director shook his head and mumbled, "Most unusual." Then, "Carol! Can you see anything at all significant in its memory pack? Any evidence of—"
But in the next instant she screamed and lunged back away from a foot-long metallic crab that had drawn up before her.
"The Flora C&A!" Stewart made a grab for the thing, but it skirted his gloved hand and started forward again.
McAllister backed away until he came up against the outcropping beside the girl. Squirming qualmishly, he kicked out and caught the crab broadside, sending it skittering back.
Then he shouted in pain and gripped his instep with both hands. "My foot! It's broken!"
But, a moment later, Stewart was certain the injury was negligible, judging from the adequate support the foot provided in McAllister's sprint for the Photon.
Bigboss completed his transmission and turned full attention on the eureka signals coming frantically from Grazer.
Interested, he inspected the sequenced data and took note of the modulation peaks that exactly duplicated the C5H8parameter.
Grazer had sensedhydrocarbon! More important, one of his spectrometric biodetectors was getting a whiff of DNA molecules!
Even those significant findings, however, accounted for but part of the frenzy with which Grazer was transmitting his impulses. There was much more behind the eurekas than that. But all the lesser worker could convey telemetrically was his general excitement, for there were no parameters dealing with the third element of his discovery.
Perplexed, Bigboss pondered this inadequacy of communication between him and his servitor—until a rationalization circuit came up with the recommendation: Tap in on Grazer's direct video system.
He did.
And Bigboss went momentarily irrational as motor circuits fought one another to express the exultation flooding from his evaluation pack. He leaped three meters high. His upper command section turned up a hundred revolutions per minute in triumphant delirium. He extended and retracted his vises, leveled his blaster and spat out a lance of vicious destruction that slashed a concentric trench in the ground about him.
Then he damped all activity and steadied himself with a sober appreciation of the telemetric signals Grazer had contributed. The servitor was confronting three hated non-Totemic mobiles!
They had emerged from their needle! They had come finally to hurl direct challenge at the Supreme Being!
Circuit currents surging once more toward irrational levels, Bigboss calmed himself with dedication to the vengeful destruction of those insolent creatures.
He transmitted a "stop-what-you're-doing-and-follow-me" order and headed into Grazer's telemetric signals. Every twenty meters or so, a discrimination circuit peaked in its erratic pattern and he hurled out a bolt of raw energy, annihilating a boulder here, leveling a rise there, pulverizing an occasional crag.
In his excitement, however, he had neglected the environs-scanning procedure he had devised to compensate for his damaged video sensor. And he didn't realize that, while he had been stabilized for transmission, Minnie had almost reached him in a stealthy advance. But now he was pulling steadily away from her.
Ignoring their order of social priority, the workers converged on the nearby outcropping. Some bore to the right around the rock formation, while others joined Bigboss in a flanking maneuver to the left. The long-legged Maggie and Peter the Meter evaluated the slanted stone as comprising no barrier and proceeded directly over it.
When he finally swung around and brought the contemptuous mobiles under direct visual observation, Bigboss paused to evaluate the situation. It required no small amount of self-control to restrain his motor circuits. But hehadto. For he was determined the arrogant mobiles would not again reach the sanctuary of their Totem.
Grazer stood before the three creatures, his servo units idling as his transmitter continued to send frantic eurekas. And now his excited impulses were joined by those of other servitors who had formed a half circle around the outcropping—Peter the Meter, boasting of excitation of an infrared radiometer; Breather, reporting traces of both oxygen and carbon dioxide in the immediate atmosphere; Minnie, whose high neutron flux instruments were beginning to identify concentrations of calcium, potassium, carbon.
Sequencing and storing the data, Bigboss sent out a curt directive that amounted to: Do not analyze! Just stay out of the way!
The ring of clansmen remained poised. Several times one of the nonmetallic captives attempted to force its way through the workers, but was pulled back by another mobile.
Bigboss brought up his blaster and loosed a vicious, blinding charge that swamped half a dozen unretracted photometers and pulverized the top of the outcropping. He adjusted his aim, compensating for the crouching, huddled position the interlopers had assumed, and fed renewed energy to the blaster's condenser.
By the next sine wave peak, however, he regretted his pre-occupation with the mobiles. For, at that moment, Minnie's drill head, sweeping through one of his fields of vision before he could discharge the blaster, crashed into video pickup lens Three.
He sprang back, rationalization pack coming frantically to grips with this further loss of visual integrity. Through luck rather than intent, he brought one of his still functioning lenses to bear on the advancing Minnie.
She let her entire drill head fly in a bludgeoning blow, but he parried it with his vise while he reasoned out the modified swivel motion now required to provide adequate coverage with only two lenses.
But the attack had touched off a number of other clashes among socially ambitious workers. Seismo turned on Minnie's exposed flank and sent a pedal disc crashing through her after analyzing chamber. Sludge spilled out upon the ground.
Peter the Meter swung his boom-and-ball gamma ray detector against Breather's air pouches while Maggie straddled Sun Watcher and proceeded to stomp on one of his telescopic instruments.
In the midst of all this confusion, Bigboss was only vaguely aware that the three impudent mobiles had slipped out of the ring of servitors and were returning swiftly to their Totem.
Infuriated over the imminent loss of prey, he swiveled around in their direction. Again, however, he neglected his defense.
And before he could trigger a charge at the fleeing things, Minnie's drill head whipped around in a level arc that snapped his blaster off at its socket and sent it hurtling across the plain.
As she drew back for another blow, he lunged over and managed to grip her bit in his vise. With a violent twist, he broke it off at the chuck.
Subdued finally, she withdrew.
"You saw it, didn't you?" Mittich demanded.
Vrausot scratched his jaw with a rigid talon. "Interesting—that trouble between the aliens and their automatons. What interpretation do you put on it?"
Pivoting on his tail, the other spun around from the screen to face the Chancellor. "That they don't even carry side arms. They had no defense whatsoever against their machines. If they were here looking for a fight, wouldn't they be armed at all times?"
Vrausot expressed ridicule by tracing a circle with the tip of his tapering snout. "Mittich, you amuse me. Only one sunset ago you were bending my tail to make me believe they may be cunning; that they might have strung out a seine for us."
"Yes?" the Assemblyman prompted, expecting more.
"Now I simply extend your own logic back to you. They prepared that drama down there for our benefit—just in case we were watching. Theywantus to believe they are stupid and helpless."
Assemblyman Mittich laced the other with a calculating stare. He was aware of the heavy irony in Vrausot's hisses and clicks and he knew the Chancellor was only deriding him.
"If I had to arrive at an alternate assessment, Assemblyman—" Vrausot paused and Mittich braced himself for more scorn. "It would be that the aliens are stupid, inept, blundering, defenseless. Actually, it would seem that they must have gained interstellar status only through accident."
"Oh, no. We knowthatisn't true."
Ignoring the interruption, the Chancellor continued. "And theywerefoolish enough to come here unarmed, apparently."
But Mittich broke in again. "If I had attracted more votes in the Curule Assembly, we would have come unarmed too."
"Ah! But we didn't. And do you know why? Because the Assembly really believes as I do, even though they might not have the courage to vote their convictions. That's why I'm going to exercise my own judgment—because Iknowtheir subliminal disposition in this matter."
Mittich unhinged his jaw, conveying dismay. There was no doubt now what the Chancellor's intentions were. Oh, he would probably swim around cautiously for a while. But his final determination was already cloaked with inevitability.
Eventually—how soon?—he would lash out at the aliens with all the ship's invincible firepower. And nothing else could be done to delay that treachery. For Mittich couldn't conceive of another last-puraidiversion, such as the suggestion that the aliens may have strung out a seine, to forestall the tragedy Vrausot was determined to perpetrate.
Lumbering over to the ship's control panel, the Chancellor directed his pilot: "Advance five degrees westward along our orbital path then restabilize."
Kavula's hands darted here and there and the vessel resounded with thethudsof great tails thumping down on the deck to maintain equilibrium as new velocity came in surges.
"This will put us below the aliens' horizon," Kavula noted.
"Of course it will," the Chancellor hissed back at the other's impertinence. "And we'll be in such a position that they won't be able to observe our artillery emissions."
He turned to the intercom. "Gun Crew One, prepare for firing."
"Action?" Mittich asked, fearing the worst.
"Of a sort—preparatory." The Chancellor studied the teleview screen and once more directed the gunners:
"I'm designating a target circle on one of those peaks down there. You may fire at will."
He touched a button and a green halo flared on the screen. He adjusted it to encompass the surface prominence he had in mind. The ship shuddered as the gunner punched his firing stud.
Mittich watched the surface erupt in a brilliant display of angry energy—a thousand kilometers off target.
The Chancellor received the fire control officer's apology, together with a request for permission to try again. The latter he denied.
"They evidently need the practice," Kavula advised.
The Chancellor fumed at his pilot's insolence. "They'll do better at close range," he promised. "Meanwhile, I want this ship stripped for action. I've reached my decision. One close pass is all it should take. We strike after sunup."
Desperately, Mittich hurried over and swung his small arms imploringly. "You can't do this thing!"
"Oh, quit being such a floundering minnow! Nothing's going to happen. They're quite defenseless, I'm convinced."
"If that's the case, then you are under injunction of the Curule Assembly to make peaceful contact!"
"Drown peaceful contact!" the Chancellor swore. "I'm supposed to exercise my judgment out here!"
"But—"
"Flotsam! There will be no peace. If that's what the aliens wanted, they wouldn't have come out here in the first place. We are going to blast them. And from here we'll go on!"
"Go on?" Mittich repeated cautiously. "Where?"
Vrausot's eyes glazed over and his disarray of teeth were exposed to the gums as he paced the deck and beat his arms against his side in a fit of frantic expectation.
"We know where their relay base is," he explained. "We'll strike that next! Then, capitalizing on the element of surprise, we'll continue to their World of Origin and destroy it outright. On the way back we'll probably knock out one or two other planets."
He turned on a dumfounded Mittich. "The war—if there is to be one—will be short. We'll have only to return to the Tzarean Shoal and muster a fleet before we wipe out the rest of their civilization. And once again ours will be the glory of conquest—such as we have not experienced in, oh, how many millennia?"
V
Stewart woke up shouting the next morning.
Perhaps the nightmare had been brought on by his previous day's experience with the telepuppets. For, in his dream, there had been the OC, again spitting out deadly fire that missed the targets only by inches before gouging great craters in the plain beyond.
Suddenly the master robot vanished, taking all the lesser automatons with it. In the suspenseful stillness that followed, Stewart could only stare in bewilderment at Carol and Randall.
Then it came—the blazing, naked light, together with the stentorian roaring that filled the sky and shook every rock.
Terrified, he huddled with the other two, his eyes searching desperately for some place to hide. But as he spotted each gaping fissure, each yawning cave entrance that might offer concealment, it too vanished. Until they were left with only a smooth, featureless plain extending to infinity in all directions.
Eventually the mighty ships—hundreds of them, it seemed—landed. And down debarkation ramps poured thousands of hideous Harpy-like forms, their gigantic claws magnified in his fancy until they were even larger than the bodies they supported and, by their sheer weight, made flight impossible.
This vast army assembled before its ships in the center of the plain and started forward.
But there was a blur of motion on the right and left extremities of Stewart's field of vision and he watched great, gauzy curtains draw together from opposite horizons, meeting directly in front of him. Like dazzling auroral streamers, they hung from a rod located so high in the stratosphere that it was lost in the blackness of space. Diaphanous though the drapes were, they appeared to be adequate, as if through some magical power, to hold back the horde of vicious Harpies on the other side.
But even as Stewart shuddered with the thought of what would befall Randall, Carol and himself should the almost intangible barrier fail, the director charted forward and drew the curtains aside.
Instantly, the monstrous creatures poured through.
But in the next moment Randall was beside his bunk, shaking him awake and regarding him quizzically.
Dismayed over the continued evidence of a lurking, inexplicable fear, Stewart ate breakfast mostly in silence while he cast about for a reasonable interpretation of the nightmare.
It was almost as though the auroral curtain represented a mental veil that hid a horror-filled recess of his mind. The content of that fissure—was it something he didn't want to face? Something he hadintentionallyhidden? Was it actually that Randall could, if he desired, draw back the curtain? Why Randall?
He brought his cup to his lips and almost gagged on an icy bitterness. Carol chided him for his abstraction, dumped the coffee into a disposal slot and gave him a refill.
Randall slapped his thigh. "Well, we still have a telepuppet problem on our hands."
Mortimer sat up sharply. "You're not going to fool around with those damned things any more, are you?"
"Don't see how we can avoid it. We've got several days' repair work on that subspace drive coil—outsidethe ship. That's the only way we can either get out of here or recover use of our long-range transmitter. But I wouldn't want to turn my back on those puppets while they're out of control."
"You won't catchmeout there again," McAllister vowed.
Randall went over to the external view screen and spent several minutes scanning the sky, bright now with the dawning light of Aldebaran.
"You won't find the puppets up there," Stewart said, finally intolerant of whatever phobia Randall might be pampering.
The director turned guiltily away from the screen. "Anybody have any ideas on what we can do about those robots?"
Stewart went over to a second screen. "After having slept on the problem, I think I might be able to contribute something."
He focused on the telepuppets, attending to their various exploratory chores out on the plain. "Carol gave me an idea with something she said yesterday. We may be able to solve our telepuppet worries within five minutes' time."
"Bring the OC back under control?" The director arched his thick brows. "How?"
"We might succeed in immobilizing it. That'll deprive the other puppets of their source of power. Within a few hours their batteries will drain and we'll be able to go to work on the OC without any possible interference."
He indicated his hostile-atmosphere sheath slumped in a corner of the compartment. "Won't need that. But I will have to have a deep-space suit—heavily shielded against solar storm exposure. You have one aboard, McAllister?"
The pilot nodded. "Standard equipment. But you'll think it weighs a ton. It's designed for null-G use."
Carol's puzzlement drained away. "The suit'smetal! Which means, as far as the puppets are concerned, that it'stotemic!"
"That's what I figure," Stewart said. "Wearing it may give me status as one of the boys."
McAllister had been right. Against the relentless tug of gravity, the armored suit felt as though it weighed not much less than a ton. Laboriously, Stewart planted one thick-soled boot ahead of the other and moved at a snail's pace across the difficult terrain.
Through a separation between two boulders he could see the telepuppet team. The machines were hard at work, with the Operations Co-ordinator majestically surveying its charges.
Stewart's legs strained under the great weight as he struggled over a rise and stepped out upon the plain.
Pausing, he stared at the mike recessed in the inner curvature of his helmet. It was dead and his resulting loss of voice contact made him feel lonely and inadequate. But the suit was not equipped with radio, since its wearer would normally be plugged into the ship's intercom system through an anchor line.
Inching across the plain, he closed in on the puppet team. Thus far he had not been noticed.
Cautiously, he skirted the knoll on which sat the Solar Plasma Detector. Even now its boom-and-ball sensor was swinging around to point toward a rising Aldebaran. He was certain he had passed in the SPD's direct line of local sight. But it only ignored him.
Twenty paces farther he gave a wide berth to the Atmosphere Analyzer. Here, too, he had to go directly in front of the thing's video sensor. But the AA obliged by making no move toward him.
So far, so good. But he had approached only those robots which would ordinarily show no interest in him, since he was neither celestial nor gaseous. A minute later, however, when he was cleared through without incident by an indifferent Mineral Analyzer, he was certain his totemic qualifications would bring him to his objective without picking up a challenge along the way.
He crested a rise, trudged between the Astronomical Data Collector and the Seismometer and, more certain of his immunity, stepped over the crablike Micro-organism Collector and Analyzer.
Then he stood hesitatingly before the master robot.
Ports ablaze with luminous evidence of faultless power generation, the huge automaton ignored him. Shorn of its laser intensifier, it appeared somewhat pathetic. But Stewart was inclined to waste no sympathy. It stood swinging its upper command section, first right, then left, to compensate for loss of two video sensors. But he was more interested in the underslung, recessed compartment whose outline he could now see. He had only to flip open the lid and throw the switch in order to deactivate the OC.
Suddenly the thing reacted to his presence. One of its lenses swept over him, stopped, swung back, overcorrected, then steadied. And he couldn't guess what analytical criteria were being applied in the general assessment.
The robot raised its vise-equipped appendage. A hostile gesture? Defensive move? Or merely one of the symbols of communication it had devised during its independent reign?
There was swift movement in the periphery of Stewart's vision and, instinctively, he dropped to the ground as a great clanking form swept past him.
Rolling over, he saw it was the Mineral Analyzer, boring in for another attack. The six-legged automaton drew up in front of the OC and swung its stout drill head in a sweeping arc.
He ducked under the gleaming neck and watched it crash into the bigger machine's lower section, sending it bouncing rearward on stumpy legs. The master robot lashed back, slashing a gaping slit in the MA's neck.
Into this fury of swinging appendages Stewart decided he would have to hurl himself if he expected to immobilize the telepuppet team. As unpredictable as the robots were, he might never get this close to the master automaton again.
The flow of battle, however, made his decision unnecessary. For the grappling machines were now sweeping over the spot where he lay and a huge pedal pad barely missed him as it thudded down.
For a fleeting instant, the recessed compartment was immediately above his head. Overcoming the ponderous weight of his mailed arm, he reached up and flicked open the lid. At the same time he managed to get a finger on and throw the switch.
One final kick by the OC hurled him from beneath the tons of metal. Meanwhile, the thing's thrashing vise caught the MA broadside and sent it flailing backward. Then the master puppet toppled over like a towering tree being felled by an ancient woodsman's chain saw. The ground trembled violently with the impact.
Stewart rose and wiped dust from his helmet's view plate.
The monstrous robot lay motionless, darkened ports evidencing its lifelessness. Close by, the Mineral Analyzer stumbled around in looping circles, one of its gyros atilt. The other puppets continued their work, unaware that when all stored energy was depleted there would be no opportunity to recharge their batteries.
Exhausted, his face filmed with perspiration and his hip aching beneath the dent the big machine had kicked in his armor, Stewart headed back for the ship. But his release from urgency lightened his steps somewhat. Now there would be little to do but wait until the lesser puppets ran out of power.
An automatic erector leveled Minnie's tilted gyro. Another emergency maintenance circuit cut in and compensated for precession. Finally her sense of balance was restored.
Rationalization circuits reasoned out the precise maneuver necessary to bring her upright and she rose upon her motor appendages, expecting at any moment to be bludgeoned again by Bigboss' vise.
Slowly she turned and sent her restricted field of vision sweeping across the ground. And her video lens came to focus on—
Bigboss!
In a most unusual position! And—motionless!
He was stretched out on the ground, extensible vise limp as it lay half covered by the soil into which it had dug. One of his antennae was crumpled beneath him while the other was bent and twisted. Hardly able to accept as valid the visual data she was receiving, she transmitted an unwarranted "please-verify-that-instruction" impulse at low volume.
Her evaluation circuit was thrown almost into a frenzy when there was no response. At maximum gain, she repeated the signal.
Stillno response!
Cautiously, she went forward and stood over the Supreme Being. She lowered her bitless drill head and nudged one of his motor appendages. Drawing away, she watched it swing back and forth in smaller and smaller arcs until it finally came to rest.
Then she went into a limited ecstasy of reaction. She whirled around in circles until she became afraid she would tilt another gyro. She reared up on her two posterior appendages and thumped back upon the ground. She swung her drill head up and down, back and forth, around. Through her rear slot she exhausted all the sludge from her analyzing chambers.
She had won! She had supplanted Bigboss!
She had climbed to the top rung of the ladder!
And now She was Supreme Being!
That she had been able to succeed, despite Bigboss' overwhelming superiority, was a datum so questionable that she almost decided to reject it before storing it away.
Minnie went into another triumphant dance, but suddenly came to a rigid halt. Her head held high and Her lens aimed in the direction of the non-Totemic mobile that was withdrawing toward its needle.
There was somethingwrongin Her Universe! It was not at all as it had been before She had conquered the Supreme Being!
Tensely, She recalled for review impressions only recently implanted on Her drums. And she recognized immediately what was missing.
The telemetric chatter of all the workers was gone! Nor could she detect the constant exchange of directive and acknowledgment that had always flowed ceaselessly between Bigboss and each of the workers. Yet, all the analyzers were there, continuing their chores as though nothing had happened.
Apprehensive now, she assigned her meager rationalization capacity to the task of deducing the reasons behind the startling change. And many sine wave peaks passed before the judgment was handed back up to her main circuits for storage on a memory drum:
Bigboss hadjustifiablybeen the Supreme Being! For He had, indeed, been Supreme. The workers had voices, of course. But they were isolated voices that could be heard by other members of the clan only because they were passed along by Bigboss.
Minnie's drill head sagged until it rested on the ground.
She was Supreme Being now. But it was only a hollow distinction. For she had fallen heir to none of Bigboss' authority. That authority had been lost forever in the neutralization of charges which had rendered the former Omnipotent One impotent.
Whathadshe done? How could she have been so irrational? Why hadn't she more thoroughly evaluated the consequences of her forced ascendancy?
More for consolation than for any other reason, she transmitted a desperate "where-are-you?" impulse to Screw Worm.
The directional signals that returned brought with them a great sense of balance to the circuits in her PM&R pack. She was not, after all, alone! She still held the supplemental function of supervision over her sole helper!
She watched Worm approach, kicking up clouds of dust with the jets that propelled him across the ground on his rolling threads. When he arrived, she sent him a "hold-everything" signal. As he remained motionless before her, she lowered her drill head until she could sense the slight change in capacitance values that indicated physical contact with him.
No, even though she had destroyed the Supreme Being and, by that action, had forever shut herself off from the other members of the clan, she was not alone. She still had her Worm!
But within the limits of those circumstances, she resolved suddenly, she would try toactlike a Supreme Being!
She drew herself upright and remained rigid while she drove her rationalization circuits at a furious pace.
Howdidan Omnipotent One act?
Judging from Bigboss' behavior, a Lord or Mistress of All Creation should go about destroying non-Totemic pretenders.
Was that whatSheshould do?
Realizing the decision would require much more concentration, she retired from the site of operations to consider all the factors.
Halfway back to thePhoton, Stewart paused and leaned against a boulder, exhausted. The muscles in his legs were flaccid from lifting the great weight of hermetically sealed plating with each step. Now he fully understood that the suit wasnotmade for walking.
Ahead, the ship was a beckoning silvery pencil that glittered in the harsh, golden light of Aldebaran and cast its blocks-long shadow on strange, bare soil and rocks.
Then he saw it—the elongated, symmetrical shape that seemed to spring up from beyond the horizon and expand explosively as he watched in dismay.
It wasa ship—the likes of which he had never seen before! Or, then again—
Bewildered, afraid, he could only stand there trying desperately to pierce the veil in his mind, to equate this incredible thing that was happening now to the inexpressible fear he had felt for weeks.
Meanwhile, the strange ship, gliding smoothly in its horizontal attitude that gave evidence of some highly developed type of antigravity drive, surged forward. Its smooth, dark under-surface, he could see, was broken by twin rows of open ports that extended from bow to stern on either side. And deep within those circular recesses bristled scores of elongated metal structures that could only be—linear intensifiers for laser weapons!
Then Stewart realized this could only be another nightmare and he sickened at the horrible prospect of being drawn further into the dream. The ship would land, of course, and out of its hatches would pour streams of vengeful, grotesque Harpies.
But, instead, the sky was lashed by scores of fierce, dazzling beams that streaked from the vessel as it passed overhead.
And he sensed that this was no nightmare, no mere symbolic expression of the vague dread that had harassed his thoughts all along. This wasreal! This was actually happening!
Bolt after bolt rammed down from the open ports, scorching the ground, blasting great holes in solid rock formations, leveling hills, raking huge furrows where before there had been only level soil.
One of the laser beams—perhaps the fiftieth or sixtieth—took the nose section off thePhoton, leaving only jagged metal as an undignified crown marring its architectural integrity. Another found its mark too, annihilating one of the helpless ship's hydraulic fins and tearing a gaping hole in its engine section. ThePhotontilted precariously, but somehow managed to remain upright.
Then the assaulting vessel was gone, swallowed from the sky by the ridge of hills over which it had passed in completing its low-altitude sweep.
Minute followed minute in the breathless silence that punctuated the impossible attack. Stewart knew he should be pushing on to thePhotonto see if Carol and the others had happened to be in the demolished nose section.
But he only stood there, paralyzed. For, as he looked back on the unbelievable action, he realized that the vicious attack had, after all,come as no surprise to him!
He had expected it all along!
Thatmust have been the nameless fear lurking behind a curtain in his mind. And abruptly he knew with a certainty that expectation of this assault had been the basis of his indescribable apprehension.
He hadknownthat a ship—an alien vessel—would be here waiting for them!
And thePhoton'screw would be taken all the more off guard because it was incredible, in the first place, that the galaxy might have spawned two intelligent, star-seeking races within the same sector.
But, if he had had that knowledge, how could he haveforgottenanything so crucially important?
VI
Stabilizing itself once more in synchronous orbit, the immense Tzarean ship generated internal gravity and meted out isotonic saline solution to a number of tanks in crew's quarters.
In the central compartment it was a triumphant, impassioned Chancellor Vrausot who turned his massive hulk on Mittich and hissed-clicked, "There! I told you they had come unarmed! There was absolutely no response to the attack!"
Grim-faced, the Assemblyman only stared at him.
Vrausot paced, thumping his stout tail against the deck with each stride. It was a gesture that expressed anxiety.
"Don't you see what that means, Mittich? Theyknewwe would be out here. They had independently corroborating evidence to that effect. Yet they came unarmed. Theyarea peaceful, naive, unsuspecting race of sittinguraphi!"
Very weakly, the Assemblyman reminded, "Our purpose, then, is to make amiable contact and determine—"
It was no use, though. The Chancellor wasn't listening. He had absolutely no sense of honor or ethical appreciation. But, Mittich reflected, that should have come as no surprise. It was to have been extrapolated from the Chancellor's political history. And now the distressing fact had to be faced: Vrausot was a megalomaniac.
The Chancellor drew proudly erect and his tail stiffened. "Butwe'renot weak! Kavula—see that all gun crews stand by. We're going to finish them off now that we've established their inability to inflict damage on us."
Mittich drew back, appalled at the fierce determination behind the Chancellor's driving ambition for conquest, disgusted with his own inability to turn Vrausot's purpose aside. How to stop him?
It was Mittich who paced this time, helplessly wrestling with the impossible problem of preventing the Chancellor from compounding Tzarean dishonor.
Frustrated, he pivoted on his tail and returned to the teleview screen. Focusing on the landing site below, he zoomed in for an extreme close-up. The aliens were still scurrying around outside their crippled ship, glancing occasionally into the sky as though terrified over the possibility of another assault.
Mittich adjusted the instrument to its operational limits, as he had wanted to do on so many occasions since they had brought the aliens under observation.
Two of the creatures were facing the mountain range behind which hid the Tzarean ship. Anxiously, the Assemblyman moved in and studied their heads, clearly visible through transparent helmets.
He drew in a startled breath. He must be mistaken. Of course he was. He could see that now.
Yet, therewassomething fascinating as he compared one of the heads with the other. What impressed him most was the contrast. There was an indisputable difference—many differences. Then he tensed with sudden realization. Perhaps hecouldforestall their fate.
"Chancellor," he called out softly. "Don't you think it might be a good idea to take prisoners?"
"Drown the prisoners!" Vrausot swore. "We don't need them."
"Yes, I realize that. But—well, look at the screen."
The other studied the picture. The scales of his forehead strained erect as he pondered the contrast Mittich had already noticed.
"Observe the one on the left," the Assemblyman suggested.
Interested, Vrausot bent forward. "You don't suppose—?"
"Yes, I do. This is our chance to studybothsexes."
"I—" The other hesitated.
"There could be significant psychological differences, you realize." Mittich pushed ahead while he had the other's attention. "Why, we can't even be sure which is dominant."
The two alien creatures had gone out of the picture, leaving only an empty image of soil and rocks.
"It would be nice to display apairof them at the Curule Assembly, wouldn't it?" the Chancellor said thoughtfully.
"That's what I had in mind. A positive demonstration of our superiority. So much more convincing than empty hisses and clicks."
Vrausot drew himself to his full height. "It will be done. Kavula, assign twenty men to a landing party to accompany myself and Mittich out on the surface. A stun gun for each man."
The pilot turned from his controls. "You'll need something heavier than that if you're going among those machines," he said officiously.
Vrausot displayed his teeth in an expression of uncertainty.
"But the robots won't be a factor for very long," Mittich pointed out. "The principal one has been deactivated. The others depend upon it for their power. Soon they'll be immobile too."
"How soon?"
"By next sunup, I'm sure."
"Very well. We'll go asurface then." Vrausot withdrew for his isotonic soaking.
Mittich turned back to the view screen and worked with its controls. Finally he located the aliens—five of them—trudging across the ground. They were headed for a nearby cliff in whose face yawned the mouth of a cave. It was the same cave one of the automatons had reported filled with oxygen. And he further recalled that oxygen was the basic requirement of the aliens, just as it was the Tzareans' fundamental necessity too.
Evidently they feared another assault on their ship. For they were carrying a number of supplies.
"You don't much approve of what the Chancellor is doing?" Kavula asked, drawing Mittich from his troubled thoughts.
"Youdo?"
The pilot flicked his tail rashly—a gesture usually associated with independent thought. "If he pushes on into the alien sector, it will be genocide. Those creatures are helpless. It isn't the sort of operation I'd care to be in on. Anyway, there's no reason why Tzareans and the aliens can't live side by side, even in one small pocket of the galaxy. We have different requirements. I don't think they would even be interested in the type of world we need."
Mittich eyed the pilot gravely. "Wecouldassume command from the Chancellor."
"You do that. I'll watch. There are just enough glory hunters in the Assembly to have my head if I tried and failed."
And Mittich was intensely dissatisfied with himself over the fact that he, too, valued his head dearly.
Aldebaran Four, rising in all its primrose splendor, cast eerie splotches of light among the tumbled rock formations outside and thrust a brilliant planetbeam boldly into the small cave.
McAllister and Mortimer were huddled against the wall, still assuring each other it must have been some mistake, that there justcouldn'tbe an alien race anywhere around.
Randall sat glumly on the emergency transceiver set, salvaged from thePhotonin order that they might contact a rescue ship—should they be able to hold out long enough for one to be sent.
Still in his suit of armor but minus the helmet, Stewart sat trancelike near the cave entrance. He hadn't said a word in hours. Nor had he uttered half a dozen words since the attack.
Beside him, Carol murmured, "It's going to be all right, Dave. Everything's going to be all right."
She placed a hand on his forehead, then looked worriedly at the director. Stewart, however, wasn't even interested in the fact that she had misinterpreted his numb silence.
For the thousandth time he searched his mind for all its hidden knowledge on the alien space ship, on how he had gained that information, how he could have forgotten it.
Carol tried to console him again, as though he were a child. "We'll get home all right. Then we'll get out of the Bureau. We'll go to Terra—you and I—and you'll see how happy we'll be."
On any other occasion, those words would have sent him into handsprings. But now they just bounced off his traumatic shield.
Then, suddenly, he had it. Heknewwhat had happened. He rose, fully in command of himself finally, and struggled out of the heavily-shielded space suit. Then he faced the others.
"I've known all along," he said, "that we might be attacked out here by an alien ship."
Carol gasped. McAllister lunged erect. Mortimer, puzzled, started forward. But Randall stopped him.
"Wait," the director urged. "We may want to hear this."
"I said," Stewart continued, "that I knew it all along. But I didn'tknowI knew it."
He looked away from their bewildered expressions. "Harlston and I made an advance exploration trip to the Hyades, all right. But wedidn'tfind seven—or was it eight?—Earth-type worlds. We didn't even drop back into the continuum. Because we found evidence of bustling subspace travel and communications that indicated a vigorous culture of star-traveling Hyadeans!"
McAllister swore. Mortimer came forward, perplexed. "But—"
Randall motioned for silence. "Let him finish."
"We got the hell out of there," Stewart said, "without even having seen a Hyadean. We figured that if there was another intelligent race in this part of the galaxy, it might be a hostile one. And our worlds had to know about it. We couldn't chance being captured.
"So we started making subspace leaps back home. One of those jumps ended here—where we had dropped off the telepuppet barge on our way out. At long range, we had a look at that team. And there was an alien ship down there—maybe the same one that attacked us this morning. It could only mean that the Hyadeans were expanding into our sector of the galaxy."
Stewart paused and stared at the cave floor, still confused over what had made him forget all that. Then he went on, but only surmising the rest:
"Don't you see? That ship must have captured us—removed from our minds the fact that we had discovered their nest in the Hyades. That way, we would never suspect we were about to run into opposition in our expansion. We'd be caught off guard, while the Hyadeans would have time for arming!"
Again, he paused uncertainly. "They must have also planted the false impression that there were many Earth-type worlds in the Hyades—so they could pick us off, ship by ship, as—"
But Randall was shaking his head miserably.
"No, Dave," the director said finally. "The Hyadeans did not brainwash you.Idid. I also planted the false impression—to justify this mission. It was necessary that onlyIknow the true situation."
Stewart staggered back.
"Yes," the other went on, "after you and Harlston told me there was another culture out there of undetermined size and intentions, I almost hit the panic stud. Two cultures expanding toward each other, previously unaware of each other's existence. The wrong move could be the shot heard around the galaxy.
"What to do? Report it to higher authorities? No. For I saw immediately what would happen: 'menace from space'; Terra and Centauri Three, our other worlds—'helpless before an unknown terror'; all that sort of stuff. Anybody could appreciate what the consequences would be.
"Send out a single ship to try for peaceful contact? But who would buy a scheme like that? Instead it would have been: Send out a thousand ships armed with laser intensifiers of every caliber, all manned by green, trigger-happy kids who had never fired a shot in battle back to the eighth generation before them."
Stewart realized there was no reason not to believe him. For, all along, Randall had acted as though heexpectedto run into something like an alien ship.
The director lowered himself wearily onto the transceiver and folded his hands. "Anyway, from what you reported, I had hopes that therecouldperhaps be peaceful contact—between two single, unarmed ships. The evidence seemed to point in that direction.
"There were our telepuppets, for instance. The OC had quit transmitting—a year ago. Later you tell me you sighted an alien ship on Aldebaran Four-B. If you put two and two together, you come out with something that looks like a logical four."
He fished for his pipe, stuck it between his teeth, but forgot to light it. "If we have hostile aliens working in our direction and planning on surprising us, would they interfere with our robots? Of course not. For then we would send a trouble-shooting gang out here to put the puppets back on their strings. And we might discover them and mess up their strategy.
"So, since the Hyadeans weren't aware you had discovered them in their own cluster, the malfunctioning telepuppets could mean only one thing: They had stumbled upon our robots, reconciled themselves to the existence of another intelligent culture, andpurposelyinterfered with the operation of our team."
"But why would they do that?" Carol asked, perplexed.
"As I figured it, that action practically amounted to an engraved calling card—requesting our appearance in the interest of amiable relations."
His final words rasped in his throat and he added remorsefully, "But I was wrong—oh, so wrong! It was only a trap. They just wanted to get us here so they could fire their opening shots!"
McAllister cut loose with a string of expletives. Mortimer only shook his head despondently.
Carol spread her hands. "But why didn't you tell the rest of us what we were getting into?"
Randall laughed in self-disparagement. "Oh, it was part of my grand strategy. I didn't want anybody along who knew what the real setup was. If this was going to be a try for peaceful contact, there'd be no room for possible hostile predispositions built up during nerve-wracking weeks of suspense while traveling to Four-B.
"You see, I even allowed for the possibility that the aliens might be telepathic, or at least have long-range instruments which could dig into our minds. If so, I was determined they would find nothing there to touch off an incident. I went out of my way to pick McAllister and Mortimer, who wouldn'tfighttheir way out of a torn paper bag. I didn't want any trigger-happy, eager Bureau boys who might start fissioning at half critical mass."
The pilot and ship systems officer grumbled, but sat still.
"I wanted you along, Dave," Randall went on, "because you are dependable and reasonably pacifistic. And since you already knew, subconsciously, what the setup was, you'd be useful. Because if trouble developed it would break your conditioning."
"And Carol." He smiled at the girl. "I brought her because I was aware of the tender sentiments between you two—perhaps even more aware than you yourselves were. If those Hyadeanscouldsee inside us, they'd know something of our gentler sentiments."
Randall snorted. "But I guessed wrong. My entire strategy wasn't worth the brain it was dreamed up in. I led us into a trap. It was the Hyadeans who turned up in a ship bristling with laser weapons. They had not, after all, sent us an engraved come-and-get-acquainted card. Instead, it was come-into-my-parlor."
Stewart was still having difficulty getting it straight in his mind. Somehow, it seemed there were still unanswered questions. But he felt too numb even to wonder about his dissatisfaction.
"The upshot of everything," he said, "seems to be that we've had it. Even if that Hyadean ship doesn't finish us off, there's no way we can get a warning back home."
The director smiled finally. "Give me credit for at least one redeeming bit of foresight. Ididconceive of the possibility that something like this might happen. So when I conditioned you and Harlston, I arranged it that the conditioning would break down in another three weeks. Harlston will then report everything. And the Bureau will guess why they haven't heard from us."
To Minnie's utter confusion, the great pink sphere had risen yet there had been no subsequent Pilgrimage to Totem. She spent an eternity, it seemed, pondering that enigma but getting nowhere.
Eventually Screw Worm erupted from the ground—oh, so slowly, so sluggishly—and rolled toward her with his load of mineral specimens. When he tried to force the substance into her intake slot, however, she only turned away dispiritedly, still mourning the loss of communication with all the others.
Screw dropped his specimens and squirmed around, tilting feebly into the attitude for boring down again.
His jets came on weakly, managing to rotate him only three or four times before giving out completely. Then he fell into a strange motionlessness.
Minnie prodded him with her chuck. He toppled over, but did not stir. Disturbed, she sent a "report-your-location" command.
But there was no response.
Like Bigboss, he was totally inoperative. Like Peter the Meter and Maggie and Grazer and Breather and all the others, he, too, was now a victim of the stubborn stillness.
Confused, Minnie stumbled forward, realizing that her motor circuits were not responding as lively as they always had. Too, she was having some difficulty evaluating and rationalizing.
Then an odd thought occurred to her: She had devoted most of her time since becoming Supreme Being to considering how she should act. Her motor activity had been at a minimum. The other members of the clan, on the other hand, had continued their physical tasks. And now they were all motionless. Only she had any power left. Could the formula be: Motion minus the presence of Bigboss equals eventual immobility?
If that were the case, then how hollow, indeed, was the distinction of being the successor to the Omnipotent One!
If she was going to act like a Supreme Being, she decided suddenly, she would have to do so in a hurry. But do—what?
Then she finally hit upon the answer: She must be about Bigboss' work of destroying non-Totemic pretenders.
And she knew just where to findfiveof the despicable things!
VII
Exhaustion blunting the bite of sharp rocks into his back, sleep finally overtook Stewart. Despite his plight, he had not resisted. For weeks had passed since his slumber had not ended in terror brought on by some form of the horrible nightmare.
But it would be different now. The Hyadean ship had torn aside the curtain behind which the suppressed knowledge had lurked. And his subconscious was rid of its awful burden.
He had been wrong, however. He knew that much when the army of hideous monsters sprang up from subliminal depth to fill the cave with their vile, menacing forms.
Only, it wasn't a cave in which he found himself now. It was a huge chamber whose vaulted ceiling was supported by ornate columns. In the center of the room was an immense table, surrounded by thousands of—chairs? Standing on stout legs evidently intended to bear ponderous hulks, the artifacts consisted of paired buttock rests merging into a large, tapering chute that curved down to the floor.
It was as though the chairs had suggested a shape for the monsters in his nightmare. For abruptly the chamber was filled with scaly creatures only remotely resembling the Harpies of his former fantasies. The head was a grotesque pair of jaws, lined with jagged teeth and resembling that of a massive crocodile. Resting in each chute was an immense tail that seemed as large as the body itself.
Then he was caught up in a vortex of blazing light and incredible sounds. He spun from fear to terror, from incomprehensible concepts to semantic confusion. The air about him was a sonic battleground ofhissesandclicks. But, occasionally, one of the noises seemed to convey meaning of a sort.
The cave floor jolted beneath him and Stewart instantly sprang up, welcoming the abrupt awakening no matter what new complication had caused the tremorlike shock.
Then Carol screamed and lurched back against the far wall.
There was a blur at the mouth of the cave and the Mineral Analyzer's huge drill rammed in—until its forward test chamber was blocked by the narrowness of the entrance.
Backing off, the robot charged again; withdrew and came forward once more. Then, apparently satisfied it couldn't get through, the thing directed its drill head in a series of determined, chopping blows that sent fragments of rock hurtling in all directions.
McAllister sidled along the wall. "That thing's got the same compulsion the OC had! It's trying to reach us!"
Randall stood in front of the transceiver to protect it from flying chips. "But I don't think it'll get through," he said uncertainly. "How does it look to you, Dave?"
"All depends on the amount of power it has left." Stewart drew Carol farther from the entrance.
Between blows, he glanced outside. Dawn was beginning to tinge the sky. "But it's been almost a whole day since it's had a recharge from the OC," he added hopefully.
The MA's drill head slammed down again and knocked loose a section of rock the size of Mortimer's head.
Carol dropped to the floor and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees.
Stewart leaned against the wall above her. "You said something about leaving the Bureau—maybe going to Terra—you and I—"
Her face was rigid, though no less attractive than he had remembered it when good-natured jest was her principal mannerism. "Talking about that is only an exercise in futility now," she said.
"I won't argue that point. But I want you to know the words weren't wasted." He took her hand. "It was something I've had in mind a long time."
Abruptly he realized the MA was no longer chipping away at the cave entrance. When he looked up, the robot was withdrawing toward a mound of tumbled boulders perhaps a hundred yards off.
He slumped down beside Carol, his sense of relief dulled by renewed concern over the nightmares. Hadeverythingin his subconscious come to the surface? Could there be more?