“Get him!” Wayne yelled. “Ishihara, get MC 6!”
Steve finally turned and saw Ishihara. “Stay away! Back off!” Then he turned and rode toward Hunter.
Ishihara remained where he was. Other riders appeared out of the trees, shouting as they leaned low under tree branches. They rode toward Hunter.
“Not too close!” Hunter called to Steve as he continued to fight the Saxons around him defensively.
Hunter swung his shield outward, pushing back one of the men on his left. At the same moment, he blocked the sword of a man on his right. He saw a spear coming toward him from a third Saxon also on his left and ducked to his right, but the motions of his arms were already committed and the momentum prevented him from avoiding the spear.
The heavy spear smashed into his left shoulder and he instantly felt a loss of control over his shoulder and arm. His energy level also dropped suddenly as some of his electrical circuits were severed. Though his awareness level did not change, he could no longer raise his shield. He felt the Saxons grab his limp left arm and pull. Afraid that some of his internal robotic parts would become exposed to them if he resisted, he allowed himself to be dragged off his mount to the ground.
Steve stopped several yards from Hunter with MC 6, confident that Hunter would fight his way free of the Saxons and join him.
“Get down and stay with me,” Steve ordered MC 6. As soon as the component robot had jumped to the ground, Steve dismounted. Then he looked up and saw Hunter wrenched from his horse by two Saxons. One of them raised his sword to slash at Hunter; Steve drew his sword and cocked his arm to throw it. “Hey! Hey, you!”
“No.” MC 6 grabbed his arm and held it fast. “Do not harm anyone.”
Suddenly, before the Saxons struck Hunter, they saw the other riders bearing down on them. The Saxons broke and ran as the riders closed in behind them.
Steve waited until Hunter had been left alone. Then he stuck his sword back into his belt and ran to Hunter. “Come on!”
MC 6 followed.
In another moment, the riders had moved out of sight. Shouts and the clash of weapons resounded through the trees nearby, but the movement of the battle had shifted the lines away from them. Suddenly Steve found himself with MC 6 and Hunter damaged on the ground in front of him.
“Hunter, can you hear me? Can I pullout the spear? Or will that make it worse?”
“Pull it out straight, please,” Hunter said calmly.
“Ishihara! Get back here,” Wayne called. He stood a distance away through some trees, near the mule. Jane and Wayne remained on a tree branch above them.
Steve took the spear shaft in his hands but looked back over his shoulder. “Jane! Come on!”
“I’m coming!” She jumped off the branch suddenly, dodging Wayne’s arm as he grabbed for her. However, as she tried to run toward Steve and Hunter, Ishihara blocked her way. She could not possibly beat his robotic reflexes and speed. In a moment, Ishihara had taken her arm, and he began to pull her back toward the mule.
Steve almost let go of the spear shaft to run to her, but realized that he could not help right now. If he approached Ishihara with MC 6, then Ishihara would try to grab the component robot and might succeed; he still followed Wayne’s orders under the Second Law. Steve also feared that if he left MC 6 with Hunter and ran to help Jane, Ishihara would dodge around Steve and would either catch MC 6 or at least chase him away. Then Steve would have to start over again-maybe without Hunter’s help.
Steve decided he would have to get Jane away from Wayne later. He drew the spear out slowly, as straight as he could. Then he knelt and unlaced Hunter’s leather armor. He loosened it enough to fumble in Hunter’s clothes for the torso panel that hid the belt unit.
Another glance over his shoulder told him that Wayne and Ishihara had taken Jane out of sight. Their mule’s hoofbeats had been camouflaged by the sounds of battle. Those sounds had grown more distant as Artorius’s riders drove the Saxons back.
“Here’s the deal, Hunter,” said Steve. “I’ll get the belt unit out and take us all back to our own time. We can secure MC 6, get you repaired, and then come back just a minute after we left to rescue Jane.”
“No.” Hunter took Steve’s wrist in his other hand and stopped him. “Listen carefully. I have identified a new problem. I have been running my self-diagnostic programs and I cannot be returned to our time in this condition.”
“Why not? You’re a robot-it’s not like moving an injured human. Even if we do a little more damage moving you, we can still get you repaired.”
“That is not what I mean,” said Hunter. “The trauma damage has triggered a more critical problem, according to the monitors that study my functions on a microscopic level. My system will explode with nuclear force if I return to our own time this way.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.” Realizing that they could not leave before talking this out, Steve drew his hand away and glanced around.
No one remained in sight. MC 6 stood motionless over Hunter and Steve. For the moment, they could talk safely.
“I don’t get it, Hunter,” said Steve. “You said the instability in the atoms of the component robots resulted from the particle shower in the time travel sphere, which combined the miniaturization process and travel through time. You haven’t been miniaturized at all. So what’s going on?”
“I have limited information with which to work,” said Hunter. “However, I surmise that some of my atoms have been made similarly unstable by the repeated trips I have taken. Trauma from the spear has destroyed the shielding on a specific location in my shoulder. The unstable atoms in that area are the ones that will explode in the particle shower if I return.”
“You mean this is the opposite problem of the component robots,” said Steve. “They can go home safely in the particle shower, but they’ll explode if they go through time normally to reach the moment they left. You’re saying you can’t use the belt unit, but you could wait around for hundreds of years safely?”
“That is correct.”
“Well…can’t we shield it again? Maybe MC 6 can handle the precision required.”
“That should be possible,” said Hunter. “I can direct him continuously by radio as he works.”
“So that’s what you want to do?” Steve asked quietly. He did not want to lose Hunter, but he understood that arguing with him about the Laws of Robotics was a waste of time.
“Not yet. I want to hear Jane’s expertise as a roboticist. As I said, I am working with limited information. I may be wrong. If so, then my parts might’ explode with nuclear force when they reach the time I left on our current mission, as the component robots have.”