"Where am I?" he asked.
"In the Interplanetary Wing," Cliff answered. "Don't you know?"
Only Stillwell's hard breathing was heard for a moment. Then hoarsely, weakly, he asked:
"How did I get here?"
"I don't know," said Cliff.
"I was making a lecture recording," Stillwell said, "when suddenly I found myself here… or I mean in there-"
He broke off and showed a return of his terror.
"Then what?" asked Cliff gently.
"I was in that box-and there, above me, was Gnut, the robot. Gnut! But they made Gnut harmless! He's never moved!"
"Steady, now," said Cliff. "I don't think Gnut will hurt you."
Stillwell fell back on the floor.
"I'm very weak," he gasped. "Something-Will you get a doctor?"
He was utterly unaware that towering above him, eyes boring down at him through the darkness, was the robot he feared so greatly.
As Cliff hesitated, at a loss what to do, the man's breath began coming in short gasps, as regular as the ticking of a clock. Cliff dared to move out to him, but no act on his part could have helped the man now. His gasps weakened and became spasmodic, then suddenly he was completely silent and still. Cliff felt for his heart, then looked up to the eyes in the shadow above.
"He is dead," he whispered.
The robot seemed to understand, or at least to hear. He bent forward and regarded the still figure.
"What is it, Gnut?" Cliff asked the robot suddenly. "What are you doing? Can I help you in any way? Somehow I don't believe you are unfriendly, and I don't believe you killed this man. But what happened? Can you understand me? Can you speak? What is it you're trying to do?"
Gnut made no sound or motion, but only looked at the still figure at his feet. In the robot's face, now so close, Cliff saw the look of sad contemplation.
Gnut stood so several minutes; then he bent lower, took the limp form carefully-even gently, Cliff thought-in his mighty arms, and carried him to the place along the wall where lay the dismembered pieces of the robot attendants. Carefully he laid him by their side. Then he went back into the ship.
Without fear now, Cliff stole along the wall of the room. He had gotten almost as far as the shattered figures on the floor when he suddenly stopped motionless. Gnut was emerging again.
He was bearing a shape that looked like another body, a larger one. He held it in one arm and placed it carefully by the body of Stillwell. In the hand of his other arm he held something that Cliff could not make out, and this he placed at the side of the body he had just put down. Then he went to the ship and returned once more with a shape which he laid gently by the others; and when this last trip was over he looked down at them all for a moment, then turned slowly back to the ship and stood motionless, as if in deep thought, by the ramp.
Cliff restrained his curiosity as long as he could, then slipped forward and bent over the objects Gnut had placed there. First in the row was the body of Stillwell, as he expected, and next was the great shapeless furry mass of a dead gorilla-the one of last night. By the gorilla lay the object the robot had carried in his free hand-the little body of the mockingbird. These last two had remained in the ship all night, and Gnut, for all his surprising gentleness in handling them, was only cleaning house. But there was a fourth body whose history he did not know. He moved closer and bent very low to look.
What he saw made him catch his breath. Impossible!-he thought; there was some confusion in his directions; he brought his face back, close to the first body. Then his blood ran cold. The first body was that of Stillwell, but the last in the row was Stillwell, too; there were two bodies of Stillwell, both exactly alike, both dead.
Cliff backed away with a cry, and then panic took him and he ran down the room away from Gnut and yelled and beat wildly on the door. There was a noise on the outside.
"Let me out!" he yelled in terror. "Let me out! Let me out! Oh, hurry!"
A crack opened between the two doors and he forced his way through like a wild animal and ran far out on the lawn. A belated couple on a nearby path stared at him with amazement, and this brought some sense to his head and he slowed down and came to a stop. Back at the building, everything looked as usual, and, in spite of his terror, Gnut was not chasing him.
He was still in his stockinged feet. Breathing heavily, he sat down on the wet grass and put on his shoes; then he stood and looked at the building, trying to pull himself together. What an incredible mйlange! The dead Stillwell, the dead gorilla, and the dead mockingbird-all dying before his eyes; And then that last frightening thing, the second dead Stillwell whom he had not seen die. And Gnut's strange gentleness, and the sad expression he had twice seen on his face.
As he looked, the grounds about the building came to life. Several people collected at the door of the wing, above sounded the siren of a police copter, then in the distance another, and from all sides people came running, a few at first, then more and more. The police planes landed on the lawn just outside the door of the wing, and he thought he could see the officers peeping inside. Then suddenly the lights of the wing flooded on. In control of himself now, Cliff went back.
He entered. He had left Gnut standing in thought at the side of the ramp, but now he was again in his old familiar pose in the usual place, as if he had never moved. The ship's door was closed, and the ramp gone. But the bodies, the four strangely assorted bodies, were still lying by the demolished robot attendants where he had left them in the dark.
He was startled by a cry behind his back. A uniformed museum guard was pointing at him.
"This is the man!" the guard shouted. "When I opened the door this man forced his way out and ran like the devil!"
The police officers converged on Cliff.
"Who are you? What is all this?" one of them asked him roughly.
"I'm Cliff Sutherland, picture reporter," Cliff answered calmly. "And I was the one who was inside here and ran away, as the guard says."
"What were you doing?" the officer asked, eyeing him. "And where did these bodies come from?"
"Gentlemen, I'd tell you gladly-only business first," Cliff answered. "There's been some fantastic goings-on in this room, and I saw them and have the story, but"-he smiled-"I must decline to answer without advice of counsel until I've sold my story to one of the news syndicates. You know how it is. If you'd allow me the use of the radio in your plane-just for a moment, gentlemen-you'll have the whole story right afterward-say in half an hour, when the television men broadcast it. Meanwhile, believe me, there's nothing for you to do, and there'll be no loss by the delay."
The officer who had asked the questions, blinked, and one of the others, quicker to react and certainly not a gentleman, stepped toward Cliff with clenched fists. Cliff disarmed him by handing him his press credentials. He glanced at them rapidly and put them in his pocket.
By now half a hundred people were there, and among them were two members of a syndicate crew whom he knew, arrived by copter. The police growled, but they let him whisper in their ears and then go out under escort to the crew's plane. There, by radio, in five minutes, Cliff made a deal which would bring him more money than he had ever before earned in a year. After that he turned over all his pictures and negatives to the crew and gave them the story, and they lost not one second in spinning back to their office with the flash.
More and more people arrived, and the police cleared the building. Ten minutes later a big crew of radio and television men forced their way in, sent there by the syndicate with which he had dealt. And then a few minutes later, under the glaring lights set up by the operators and standing close by the ship and not far from Gnut-he refused to stand underneath him-Cliff gave his story to the cameras and microphones, which in a fraction of a second shot it to every corner of the solar system.
Immediately afterward the police took him to jail. On general principles and because they were pretty blooming mad.