“What the-”
Hari could only mutter and stare. He glimpsed Biron Maserd, his back against the wall, and a tiny weapon in his hand. A miniblaster that none of the raiders had ever discovered, despite repeated searches.
“Seldon, get down!” the nobleman urged. But Hari saw no point. Any force that could surprise and slay one of Daneel’s colleagues would have no trouble dealing with a pair of confused humans.
A figure sauntered into view, beyond the open hatchway. Its appearance startled Hari, while at the same time bringing back a wash of memories.
It was manlike, yet shorter, more bowlegged and much hairier than most subspecies of humanity.
“By god, it’s a chimpanzee!” cried Maserd, raising the pistol.
Hari motioned for him not to shoot. “A pan,” he corrected, using modern terminology. “Don’t frighten it. Maybe we can…”
But the animal paid little heed to Hari or Maserd. Casually glancing their way, it strolled past, grabbed the severed head of Kers Kantun from the floor, then scurried onward around the next corner. Soon its scampering footsteps were heard no more.
Hari and the nobleman exchanged a look of utter perplexity.
“I have no idea what just happened. But I think right now we’d better hurry back to the ship.”
3.
They knew something was desperately wrong before reaching the final stretch of twisty passageway where the Pride of Rhodia was berthed. Half a dozen human figures milled aimlessly outside the airlock-Sybyl and Horis Antic, along with Maserd’s two crewmen and a pair of Ktlinans. They stared at the walls, moving on a few paces, muttering and apologizing as they bumped into each other.
“We’d better get them aboard,” Maserd suggested
“And get out of here as fast as possible. I’m not inclined to hang around, looking for explanations.”
Both men ushered dazed humans toward the airlock. Fortunately, they seemed cheerful. Sybyl even cried out with joy, and tried to embrace Hari.
Once aboard, they saw one reason for the confusion. All of the lesser mechanoid robots that Kers Kantun had left aboard as nursemaids now lay broken and scattered on the floor. Jeni Cuicet sat amid a jumble of parts, smiling as she tried to fit them together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Two raiders from Ktlina bickered like small boys, fighting over a shiny eye-cell from one of the murdered machines.
“I’ll warm up the engines,” Maserd told Hari. “You get everyone together and accounted for.”
Hari nodded. The gentry class had been fine-tuning its tone of command for twenty millennia. When decisions had to be made without deliberation, one was better off going with a nobleman’s swift gut reaction. As Biron rushed forward, Hari nudged people aft toward the lounge, belting them in comfortable seats. His initial head count came up short by four. After hurrying to scour both ships, he found two more Ktlinans-a man and a woman-hidden in a storage closet, taking comfort in each other’s arms. With a few soothing words, he got them to join the others.
“Hey, Professor!” Jeni waved, cheerfully. “You should’ve seen it. Tiktoks fighting tiktoks. Just the sight of it made my head feel like it’d split!”
The young woman was brave and stoical, but Hari could tell that her fever was still bad, perhaps made worse by things she had recently witnessed.
I’ve got to find the antidote to this stuff Kers used to drug them, so Sybyl can give the poor girl some medical attention.But first priority had to be getting out of here!
Underfoot he felt the rising rhythms of well-tuned space engines. Maserd was playing his yacht like a musical instrument, skipping over the normal checklist and preparing for rapid takeoff.
That leaves two unaccounted for,Hari pondered, and turned just as someone’s shadow crossed the portal behind him. Mors Planch stood there, groggily pinching the bridge of his nose. While the others had received some sort of happy juice, Planch was thoroughly sedated by Kers Kantun. He shouldn’t even be awake, let alone walking around!
“What’s going on, Seldon? What’ve you done…with.?” my crew…my ship?”
Hari almost tried to deny that this had anything to do with him, but he could not bring himself to lie.It has more to do with me than I ever have wanted.
He took the dark spacer by his arm. “This way, Captain. I’ll make you comfortable.”
Just then a blatting siren sounded as vibrations shook the space yacht. Hari and Planch stumbled. The big man was far heavier and stronger. As his muscles spasmed, Planch gripped Hari’s arm so tightly that waves of agony erupted, almost enough to make Seldon faint.
Suddenly, someone was there, helping pull Mors Planch away, relieving Hari of the burden. Hari realized that the nobleman must still be in the control room, piloting the ship, so it could only be
Sure enough, the newcomer wore fancy, fractal-plaid pants and an iridescent jacket. It was Gornon Vlimt, the eccentric artist from Ktlina.That’s everyone accounted for, Hari thought with some relief, but also puzzlement. Gornon wasn’t having any trouble focusing attention. Unlike the others, his gaze was steady.
“Come along, Professor,” Vlimt urged. “We’ll get you settled in. It will be a bit rocky until we get away from this place.”
Hari sat in a plush chair near the view screen while Gornon strapped Mors Planch in and quickly made sure of the others.
“I have business in the control cabin, Professor. We’ll talk later. Meanwhile, why don’t you enjoy the view? Nothing like it has been seen for a thousand human generations, and perhaps nothing like it ever will.”
With that, Vlimt left the lounge.
Hari had a sudden, wild urge to shout a warning ahead to Biron Maserd, but then felt overwhelmed by fatigue. Anyway, if his guess was right, a warning wouldn’t make much difference.
The spectacle outside was indeed memorable-a flare of individual archives exploding ever more rapidly to become a virtual fireworks display. Innumerable flashes, each one vaporizing a billion terabytes of information. It took some piloting skill to weave a path amid such coruscating bedlam. But soon Hari saw another mode of destruction ensue in the starship’s wake. The rickety space station that lay at the core of the great archive collection began to glow. Heat emanated from stovepipe tunnels and oblong storage chambers, as the contents of the vast warehouse began to melt.
I wonder what happened to the other ship.Hari peered about until he spied the Ktlina vessel. It should just be lying there in space, a derelict with no one aboard. But as Hari watched, the sleek craft began to glow with pent-up energies. Maneuvering jets fired, and it began moving in the opposite direction from the course taken by thePride of Rhodia. Soon its glimmering wake was all that remained. Then Hari lost sight even of that, as an entirely new zone of destruction came into view.
The terraformers,he thought, staring, as gigantic tilling machines began their own cycle of demolition. Prehistoric starcraft, so ancient and primitive, and yet, so awesomely powerful that they had transformed whole planets, began to shrivel into dust as if they were being crushed by the weight of years.
A moan escaped Horis Antic as the soils expert pointed at the vivid scene. He was recovered enough from the drugged stupor to understand what this meant. The proof of his hypothesis-a discovery that would be his sole claim to fame among quadrillions of anonymous galactic citizens-was vanishing before his eyes.
Hari felt sympathy for the little man.
It would have felt good and right for the truth about this to come out. Daneel claims the tillers were sent forth by a different kind of robot. Programmed by an Auroran fanatic whose fierce notion of service to humanity meant annihilating everything else, in order to prepare sweet places for settlers to land. Daneel disavowed those ancient Aurorans. Yet his logic differs only in that he’s more subtle.