Spencer, leading the way, saw the sentry first; the android was loping toward them terrifyingly fast, its head low and its hand fumbling at the flap of its holster. Thomas saw Spencer leap at the galloping thing, whirling the shovel over his head like a long battle-ax. The edge of the descending blade cracked onto the android's shoulder, and Spencer and the sentry were both knocked off their feet. Thomas ran toward them with his own shovel held over his head.
The android jumped up with bestial agility and finally fumbled the pistol out of its holster as Spencer rolled to his feet three meters away, ready for a last charge at the thing. At that moment Thomas's rush arrived from behind the android—he swung the poised shovel down upon the creature's skull with every bit of strength the evening had left to him, and then tumbled past in an involuntary somersault across the pavement.
No more, he thought as he struggled to his hands and knees, fighting a strong nausea that gripped his stomach. He heard a clank of metal breaking metal, and a sound like a dropped coin. "In here," somebody hissed, as somebody else hauled Thomas forcibly erect and shoved him forward. He tripped through an open doorway and sprawled full-length across the floor. He lay there while the door was shut behind him, trying simultaneously to recover his breath and control his stomach.
"Old Rufo there… isn't as tough as he thinks," someone panted.
"Go to hell. He… killed that android, didn't he?" came a gasping whisper in his defense. "So far tonight he's the only one who has."
Thomas rolled over and sat up. "The spirit," he pronounced carefully, "is willing, but the flesh is drunk and exhausted." Negri, Jeff and Spencer, still carrying their shovels, were slumped against the walls of the little room. "Where are we, anyway?"
"I think this is the service entrance of the infirmary," Negri answered. He held up his hand suddenly, and thudding footsteps could be heard racing past outside the door. "We can't relax yet. They might notice the busted lock any time. Uhh," he groaned, standing up, "let's see where this inner door takes us."
It was an aluminum door with rubber insulation around its edges; unlocked, it swung open at Negri's first tug. The room beyond was lit by dim red lights, and smelled of steam and disinfectant. They filed inside, and saw a number of chest-high vats lined up against the wall. Thomas's dim hope that this might be a winery of some sort evaporated when he peered through the clear plastic cover of one of them.
"Damn my soul!" he whispered. "There's a guy in there!"
The other three joined him and looked down at a smooth human body suspended a few centimeters below the surface of the cloudy liquid in the vat.
"We're in an android brewery," Spencer said. "I didn't know there was one here."
"Who's this guy look like to you, Spence?" asked Jeff. "He looks familiar to me."
"Yeah," Negri agreed suddenly. "I've… seen that face."
Thomas peered at it again, but it didn't especially resemble anyone he'd ever seen. He wandered over to another vat. "Whoever it is," he said, "he's over here, too."
The room held a half-dozen vats, and a quick check revealed that the nearly completed occupants of all six were cast from the same blueprint.
"I wish I could remember who it is they all look like," Negri said, frowning.
"Should we kill them?" Jeff asked.
Spencer looked at him skeptically. "How? This is obviously shatterproof plastic. Even with these shovels it'd take five minutes to splinter through one of them. And I don't see any valves we could fool with. We don't have time. Come on."
They left the room through another metal door and found themselves in a hallway. It felt chilly after the steamy heat of the vat room, and Thomas wondered wistfully when—and if—he'd see his theater-basement bed again. Spencer led them down the hall in the opposite direction of the barracks. The floor was carpeted, and the corridor was dimly lit by electric bulbs hanging in globes of frosted glass. The disinfectant smell was here, too, but rivalled by an odor reminiscent of stables and animal cages.
The corridor split in a T, and they followed the left-hand branch, which ended after 35 meters, at a door whose chicken-wire-reinforced window revealed only darkness beyond. "This just may lead outside," Spencer whispered, holding up crossed fingers as he turned the knob.
At that moment the door at the far end of the hall was flung open by a gang of gray-uniformed androids who uttered glad shouts as they bore down upon the four half-fuddled actors.
Spencer whipped open the door and bounded after his three companions, whirling on the other side to lock it by twisting a disk on the knob. The air was stuffy and still, and he realized they were in another room. "Turn on the lights!" he barked. "We have to get out of here."
Thomas's groping hand found a switch; he flipped it on and the room was abruptly flooded with illumination.
Sitting up in their blanketless beds, blinking and whimpering at the sudden light, were what appeared to be nine grossly obese naked men. "Lights out!" one of them squeaked, and the rest took up the cry like a flock of parrots: "Lights out! Lights out!"
"You three hold the door," Spencer snapped. The androids on the other side were already kicking and pounding on it. "I've got an idea."
While Thomas, Negri and Jeff tried to pull on the doorknob and duck the splintering glass of the crumpling window, Spencer raced to the door at the far end of the room, which proved to be, as he'd expected, locked. He dragged the nearest bed over to it and lifted one end so that the whimpering occupant was dumped onto the floor in front of the locked door. Then Spencer ran back to his companions, whipping off his shirt.
The reinforced window-glass had been punched almost out of its frame, and android hands were reaching through and plucking at the young men's hair and shirts. "Hurry, Spence!" Thomas gasped.
Spencer wrapped the head of one of the shovels in his shirt, and then fished a matchbook out of his pocket and struck a match to the fabric. It was slow to take the flame, but after a few door-pounding, glass-splintering seconds it began to flicker alight.
Spencer headed for the far door again, raised the shovel over his shoulder and, charging forward, flung the makeshift spear at the bloated android on the floor.
It arced through the still air, spinning lazily and trailing smoke, and then thudded into the creature's distended belly. There was a muffled bang, a flash of light and a cloud of acrid smoke, and they heard the door bounce on concrete outside.
"Let's go," Spencer panted; unnecessarily, for the other three had already released their door and were following him at a dead run toward the empty, smoke-clouded doorway, while the remaining occupants of the beds gibbered, "Lights out! Lights out!"
When Thomas burst out through the doorway, practically on the heels of Negri, the first thing he noticed was the temperature—-the night air was hot and dry, blowing from the east. He followed his companions as they raced across the dark lawn, cringing as he ran, in anticipation of the tearing impact of a bullet in his back.
"Get moving, Rufus," Spencer gritted, seizing Thomas by the shoulder and pulling him along. Jeff grabbed his other arm, and Thomas found himself nearly being carried toward the fence.
Hard footsteps pounded on the lawn behind them, but the four had reached the fence now and were helping each other scramble and fall over it several seconds before the androids arrived and began shooting their pistols through the boards.
"Give yourselves up," the androids called calmly as their bullets hammered at the splintering boards of the fence. "Give yourselves up." When they had emptied their revolvers, one of them climbed onto another's shoulders and peered through the strands of barbed wire at the empty stretch of Main Street beyond. A few lights had gone on in nearby buildings, but no one came outside to investigate the shooting. The android looked up and down the street, peered at the sidewalk below, and sniffed curiously at the hot night wind as if hoping to catch the fugitives' scent.