Suddenly, in the line of prisoners marching behind Hunter to the west, Steve saw MC 4, his head down like the others. Steve pointed. “Hunter! There he is!” He started to yell MC 4’s name, then realized that it would alert the component robot to the pursuit. So far, in the noise and confusion all around, MC 4 had not realized anyone was concerned with him.
Something hard slammed into the back of Steve’s head and his legs crumpled, dropping him to the frozen ground with a thump. For a moment, he was dazed. He heard shouts and felt the pounding of feet on the ground around him, but could not think clearly.
Wayne and Ishihara had both seen Leutnant Mohr’s armored car pull up to the gate. Wayne had hoped the Leutnant was coming back for them. When Wayne had seen Hunter and his team, of course, he and Ishihara had hidden in the crowd of prisoners. They stayed behind Hunter as the prisoners moved toward the gate of the pen.
Now, however, they had both been herded close to the gate with everyone else. Ahead of him, Ishihara had almost reached the opening. Wayne remained caught behind the bottleneck, near Steve and Judy and the guards holding them. Then Wayne heard Steve shout and point to MC 4, who was about to march right in front of the gate among the troop of prisoners.
Wayne felt a rush of excitement. He, too, pointed to MC 4. “Ishihara, grab him!”
Ishihara was still trapped in the crowd, however. As they shuffled forward with everyone else, Wayne heard a uniformed man tell the woman whom Steve had called Judy that he was going to kill her, Steve, and the others who had been taken aside. Then the man spat on her.
Wayne was shocked. Somehow, until this moment, the people around them had been sort of abstract, unreal. He knew that the combat and stress of war was horrible, but he had not expected to see prisoners simply executed out of hand like this. For the first time, he realized how ignorant he was of this time and these people.
Hunter had moved just outside the gate and beyond the barbed wire, but he responded instantly. Flinging aside one startled German guard, he plunged directly into the barbed wire, stretching it forward with his weight, ignoring how it tore into his clothes. He reached through the wires for Judy and Steve, but two more guards threw themselves on him, forcing him to turn and fight them off.
In the same instant, Ishihara pushed people away from him just inside the barbed wire. He slammed into the guard who had spit on Judy, knocking his rifle to the ground. The immediacy of the danger to people from his own time had forced Ishihara to act under the First Law.
The other prisoners quickly drew away from the gate, hoping to avoid getting hurt if the Germans began firing their weapons. Suddenly the open gateway was in front of Wayne. MC 4 was only a few yards away.
Wayne looked back at Hunter and Ishihara, who were struggling with a knot of German guards and other soldiers. More soldiers had gathered around them with their rifles aimed. They hesitated to shoot for fear of hitting their own comrades.
Steve pushed himself up, stumbling into a standing position. Judy took his arm to help him up. She frantically pulled him toward the open gate.
The angry, impatient guard who had spit on Judy had drawn his sidearm. With deliberate care, he raised it toward the back of Judy’s head.
Forgetting MC 4, Wayne threw himself against the man’s legs. The gun went off, firing into the ground. Both men fell, tripping some of the troops who had been shuffling in a crazed huddle with Hunter and Ishihara.
Steve blinked, staggering dizzily, and looked around. Judy was dragging him by the arm. Ishihara flung German soldiers away from himself. They fell against the semicircle of armed soldiers surrounding them. Some fired as they went down, but their bullets went wild into the air.
As Judy pushed Steve out the open gate, Ishihara threw himself on the ground over Wayne, protecting him. Then he reached into his tunic, apparently the same one he had worn in ancient Germany. Wayne and Ishihara vanished.
Jane had grabbed MC 4’s arm and was trying to pull him after her. He was not coming, but she had slowed him down. Hunter hurled the soldiers around him to the ground just as Steve and Judy reached him. Then Hunter stretched out one long arm and yanked MC 4 closer. Jane came with him, still holding the small robot’s arm. Steve saw Hunter reach inside his heavy overcoat.
An instant later, Steve found himself back in the familiar, crowded darkness of the sphere. No one spoke while Hunter opened it, jumped out, and pulled MC 4 into Room F-12 after him. Judy got out next; this time she and Jane had to help Steve climb out slowly. He was still dizzy.
“Hunter, Steve needs to be checked by a medical robot,” said Jane. “He’s hurt. I can’t tell if it’s serious or not.”
“I am radioing for one now,” said Hunter. He turned to MC 4. “Can you hear us speak?”
“Yes.”
“Jane, please give him direct instructions.”
“Do not make any attempt to get away or shut off your receptivity to our instructions under the Second Law,” Jane said, looking over her shoulder. “Stay right where you are until we give you further orders. Acknowledge.”
“I agree,” said MC 4.
Jane turned to Daladier, who still stood by the door. “Do not allow MC 4 to leave our custody. If he makes some interpretation of the First Law to justify it, he might still make an attempt to escape.”
“Acknowledged,” said Daladier.
Steve sank onto the couch. His head throbbed painfully, but he could think more clearly now, and followed the conversation around him. “Did we leave right in the middle of everybody?”
“Yes,” said Hunter. “However, I believe that in the crowd and confusion, with the battle coming near, stories of our disappearance will not be taken seriously.”
“The sad truth is, most of those prisoners died soon afterward in captivity,” said Judy. “Their stories about our disappearance, if they told them, had nowhere to go but to each other.”
“The German soldiers and guards may have lived to tell the story,” said Jane. “A few of them, anyway.”
“Some may have survived to talk about it,” said Judy. “Under the Nazi regime, I feel that anyone who said he lost custody of prisoners who vanished magically would not be taken seriously-he might even be punished for offering such a flimsy excuse. In a system that thrives on fear, the soldiers might have chosen not to repeat what they saw.”
“Our concern is a real one,” said Hunter. “If possible, we must not disappear in front of witnesses during future missions.”
“How did we happen to come across MC 4?” Steve muttered, looking up at him.
Jane turned to MC 4. “Tell us how you came to be a prisoner of the Germans.”
“I attempted to sneak up on the German lines and move past them,” said MC 4. “However, dawn was breaking by the time I had crossed the open territory and German sentries saw me. They trained their weapons on me and the Third Law required that I not take risks with them. They put me in a prison pen without interrogation. Then some soldiers came and began emptying each pen. They escorted us with weapons and told us which way to go. We marched from one pen to another down the rear of the lines until we reached the one where you were.”
“Lucky for us,” said Steve.
“Actually, chance factors were quite low,” said Hunter. “Under the pressure of impending combat, the Germans were imprisoning all strangers and marching them together out of the area. We were all caught in the same net. If we had not spotted him when we did, we would have had to return to our own time. However, in a later trip to complete the mission, we would have still have found him in the group marching to the rear.”
“What do you think?” Jane grinned at MC 4.
“I agree.”
“Steve,” said Hunter. “How are you feeling?”
“I think I’ll be okay.”
“With your permission, I shall contact the medical robot again and have him meet us at MC Governor’s office. Are you well enough to ride there?”