Andre Norton (ed) (21 page)

"Yes, sir.
Running Bull's cracked the pictorial
transmission. There's a picture of the ship going out unbeamed in all directions,
plus a whole lot of nonpictorial stuff."

"Thanks. Engelhart, drift the mine over
to a convenient hill, but make sure there are no robots around, because I don't
want to do damage yet, only to show that we can—and blow the hill to
bits."

"Right, sir," said Engelhart,
reaching for his mike.

After a while, the spherical bulk of the mine
bobbed out from the side of the ship on a levitator beam and wove a complicated
dance pattern over the radar antenna. Then the operator of the beam shifted it
off to one side and saw that the antenna turned to follow it. He put on full
power, and the mine whined rapidly into the distance.

About forty miles away, on the sky-line, a
three-hundred-foot hill fountained skywards in a mushroom of smoke and dust.

"While they're
thinking that one over," said Chang with an air of satisfaction, "I
want a heli fitted with remote controls. Tell me when it's ready."

Ten minutes later Engelhart
reported, "Ready, sir."

"Right.
Jam the doors open and let it settle down
about a hundred yards from the hill, in full view of it. You will also send out
another mine, but keep this one bobbing a few feet off the ground. I want them
to get the idea that they can send back the man they kidnaped, or go the way
the hill went."

"Number
one generator's starting to overheat, sir," said Spinelli warningly.
"I can't guarantee you more than another ten minutes of this—"

"Never mind,"
said Chang. "Hurry, Engelhart."

The heli shot away from the side of the ship
and sat down with a bump that bounced it three times on its hydraulic landing
gear. The pilot at the radio controls had been told to hurry. Within a few
yards of it hovered the fifteen-foot bulk of the mine, its metal surface
gleaming dully in the sunshine.

They waited. One minute
passed.
Then two.
Three.

Then
a crack opened in the hillside, and Chang leaned forward to stare out the
viewport. "Something's happening, sir," reported Keston belatedly.

"I know," said
Chang. "Question is—what?"

The crack grew wider. There were steps beyond
it, dimly visible, but the interior was dark compared to the sunbright ground
outside, and nothing could be made of it until—

Chang's eyes narrowed as he saw the heads of
two robots appear.
Then, a moment later, that of a man
between them.
Since he was three and a half feet shorter than the
robots, he showed after they did. But he was coming out.

They
reached the grassy ground under the eyes of all the men in the ship, and it was
clear that the man in the center was accompanying them without being led. As
soon as they saw the heli, the robots stopped, motioned the man to go on. After
slight hesitation he did so, walked across the intervening space.

"Number three
generator's heating up, sir," said Spinelli without looking up. T don't
want to seem impatient, but—"

"You
can get ready to lift," said Chang. "Engelhart, have your pilot pick
the heli up the moment Phillips gets aboard. I suppose that is Phillips?"

"Looks like him, sir.
How about the mine?"

"Bring
it inboard along with the heli. I don't expect trouble now. What
is
Phillips doing?"

He had paused on the step of the heli and
turned to wave-actually to
wave
at
the robots!

Before Chang could summon a suitable comment
on this lunatic action, the pilot of the heli, warned of the need for haste,
had given it a slight upward jerk—about six inches, enough to make Phillips
scramble aboard in a hurry.

"Numbers two and six generators are
heating up, sir," Spinelli reported.
 
"Won't stand much more."

"All right.
Have Deeley give you a top emergency orbit-quick."

The blades of the heli blurred, and it rose
swiftly and headed for the ship a mile above it. The mine, too, lifted and
began to home at speed. Chang could hear Spinelli uttering frantic orders to
his engineers.

"Heli
in," reported Engelhart after what seemed an eternity, and Chang shouted,
"Lift,
Spinelli!"

The
hill in the viewport gave a frantic lurch and began to dwindle. Then there was
an anguished scream from Spinelli's speaker, and every light in the ship went
out.

They got the emergency illumination on almost
immediately, and Chang looked along the bridge at Spinelli, who was whispering
into his lapel speaker, independent of the main power supply. He said,
"What happened?"

Spinelli
looked
up,
brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. He
said, "Number one generator blew up, sir, and one of my techs took a bad
bum, but he'll be O.K., I think. Well have the generator rewound in about an
hour. They're attending to the mess now."

Chang nodded, said, "Adhem, send someone
to engines to treat the burnt man, will you?"

"Right away, sir," said the medical
officer, reaching for his own lapel speaker.

Chang glanced through the viewport. It showed
a vast number of brilliant stars and a small segment of the world they had
just left so precipitately.

He said, "Deeley,
where are we?"

"In orbit, sir, provided nothing went wrong.
About ninety-four thousand
miles out, in a lunar equilateral with the inner moon.
It was the safest
bet in the emergency, but I'm afraid it'll take a lot of getting out of."
"That doesn't matter. Nice work in the circumstances.
Keston,
everything O.K. by you?"

"Yes, sir.
Techs and equipment survived unharmed. But the semantic analyzer was
running off number one generator, and if you want it in a hurry we'll have to
rewire it to another circuit."

"Leave it, then. They'll have it
repaired in another hour.
Engelhart, how about this man
Phillips?"

"I'm
going to have him sent down to Medical for a check-up, sir.
That
O.K. by you?"

Chang glanced at Adhem, who nodded and stood
up. "I think
111
supervise this
myself
," he said. "It may be a little tricky.
Excuse me, sir." He went out.

"Warn
me if anything happens," said Chang, reaching for his own lapel speaker,
which was hung on its hook by his control desk. Then he sat down and stared at
the massed glory of the stars till his eyes ached.

Time
passed. The ship slowly began to regain its normal air. First the hum of the
generators cut in again, and the main lighting system took over. Then the ship
turned so that the world below was visible through the viewport. The main communication
system reawoke with a squawk.

Adhem's voice, tinged with worry, was the
first thing to issue from Chang's speaker after it came on.

"Sir?"

"What is it?"

"We've
given Phillips the works, sir. There's no apparent sign of tampering with his
mind—no hypnosis, no conditioning at all anywhere accessible to our techniques.
But he has an odd story to tell and no mistake. Says he was treated fine, likes
the robots a lot, and, among other things, that they speak Anglic Terrestrial."

"Is that so?" said Chang. "Is
that correct or an induced delusion?"

"I'm afraid it's correct, sir. There's
no sign of a patch in his memories. I think maybe you'd better see him."
"I'll be down in a moment." "Do you want a guard on him?"

"Might not be a bad idea. Don't make it
obtrusive—I take it he can't hear what we're saying?"

"No. This is the dement ward, and it's
soundproof. I'll have a guard ready."

Adhem met the captain outside the hospital
section and said, "I've put the guard behind a screen of one-way glass,
sir. There's something a little odd about Phillips, which I suspect of being
emotional conditioning."

"Emotional
conditioning?
Violent?"

"No! He's in perfect endocrine balance.
As a good trooper, Phillips should be aggressive but obedient, and his nerves
were a little ragged, like all the rest of us. That shouldn't have been cured
by what he's been through. Now he seems sort of—contented. I don't know how to
put it. See for yourself." He opened the door.

Trooper Phillips rose smartly from his chair
as they went in. He wasn't wearing a hat, so he didn't salute.

He was a little dark man, with broad
shoulders and hairy hands, and a face that showed signs of rough usage, but he
almost radiated what Adhem had called contentment.

"Sit
down, Phillips," said Chang, nodding. He leaned against the wall beside
the door, glanced around. On the left was the door of one-way glass behind
which the guard must be hiding. It was rather comforting to know he was there
with weapon ready. Then he glanced back at Phillips, trying to understand the
strangeness in his bearing. He failed.

"Let's hear your
story," he invited.
"Right from the
beginning."

"Well,
sir," said Phillips, T was playing center field when Horrigan hit what
looked like a sure homer. I ran after it and didn't even realize I'd gone out
of sight of the ship. Anyway, suddenly a robot looms up out of nowhere—I got a
funny idea he was invisible because I knew he was there O.K. but every time I
tried to see him plain I got all cross-eyed. Anyway, I felt scared half to
death, but before I could holler he'd picked me up and started to run. I don't
know how fast we were moving, but I was sure glad he held one of his spare
hands over my face like a windshield.

"Well, I couldn't do anything about
...
I couldn't even kick, not that he would
have felt it if I had. So I just hung on and tried to guess how long I had to
live till we came to that fancy place that looks like a hill only it isn't, and
the robot pelted up it and we dived into that crack in the ground. I sure
thought it was all over with me. But it wasn't.

"We came into a sort of big room, with
lots of light all over and a whole lot of shiny metal and crystal everywhere
and big boards on the walls covered with dials and lights and switches. The
place smelled of ozone, as if there was a lot of electricity around—like the
generator room does—and there were a whole lot of these robots standing around.
They weren't invisible. I could see them plain as I see you.

"Well,
my robot put me down and I sort of stood there feeling little and scared,
because all the robots are about nine feet high, when one of them came up to me
with a sort of gadget he parked on my head—I couldn't do anything about it somehow,
though I felt I'd drop dead any moment. He held it there a couple of minutes,
and then
flay
me if he didn't start to talk
Anglic!"

"He talked Anglic?
How?"

T asked that, sir. He said
the gadget on my head was an e.e.g. only a lot better, and it picked up the
language out of my mind and turned it into radio
waves which
is
what they use to talk with—them and the big one."

"The big one?"
said Chang. "What's that?"

Phillips
looked very slightly astonished. He said, "Why, the one I was inside, of
course, sir. The robots told me he was a sort of big computer like the one they
have at Canopus, but better, and he was what they called a combination father
confessor and information bureau for all the robots. I sort of gathered there
were
more than one of the big ones, but I don't know
where the others are. He talked to me, too—the big one did. They had a
loud-speaker fixed up on one wall, and they talked to me by modulating their
own radio beams as if they were microphones."

Chang
said, "That's a useful trick—direct modulation of a carrier wave." He
glanced at Adhem, who raised his eyebrows, and looked at Phillips again. He
said, "Go on."