Three Model Eights held Laura's pursuer pinned to the ground. The fourth was pressing its arc torch into the left thigh of their prisoner. The right leg, Laura saw with a sudden jolt of nausea, lay on the ground… severed.
The captive robot lay perfectly still — its head raised and watching their efforts. The amputation was extremely precise. The cut on the left leg was being made just below the hip — at exactly the same place as the right. When the welding torch fell dark, the crackling air grew quiet. The captors all rose. The one at the feet of their victim held the two severed legs.
The paraplegic Model Eight stared down at its missing limbs, then lowered its head and raised its arms straight up. The two robots at its head grabbed its forearms, and they dragged the legless machine toward the Village.
The remaining Model Eight stood just outside the jungle not ten feet from where Laura knelt. When the others had gone, the robot's head turned toward her. It held its free hand up in the air, just as Laura had done in the road.
She took a guess — prepared to run back into the black jungle at the slightest hint of danger. "Hightop?" she asked in a low and quivering voice.
The Model Eight raised the electric torch into the air. The torch flared once with a sizzling sound and flash of brilliant light.
The robot then lowered the makeshift weapon into its equipment belt. It extended its hand to Laura, palm-up.
She rose and carefully stepped out into the clearing. She didn't take the proffered hand, but with her heart pounding she followed Hightop down the hill. From the way he kept turning to look back at her, Laura didn't feel she was the robot's prisoner. Hightop acted like her rescuer, her savior, her protector. She just wished she could get some hint of what was going on in his mind.
The cold and expressionless face gave her no clues as to his intent.
Hightop paid her less and less attention the farther they progressed into the Village. They passed two other Model Eights and the wreckage of another Model Seven whose spider legs were strewn all about the central boulevard. This one had not been hit by a car. It had burn marks crisscrossing its torso in perfectly straight scars.
Another Model Eight appeared, crawling out the front door of a building. Its right shoulder made contact with the doorframe, and wood splinters flew onto the sidewalk. Through the display windows of the store she could see shelf after shelf of expensive crystal. The floor was littered with sparkling debris.
Instead of turning sideways the way it had presumably entered the store, the robot pressed carefully but firmly straight through the frame. With one long breaking sound it was through, widening the entrance in the process to more comfortable proportions.
Hightop stopped in front of the store, and Laura halted beside him. The robot from the china shop approached and opened a panel on the front of its chest. From the open compartment it extracted a wide, flat connector. Thousands of glowing white dots of light emanated from the connector's exposed end. Hightop opened his own compartment, and the new arrival cabled up to the mini-net housed in Hightop's chest.
It was the same cable that had been run from Hightop to Gray's laptop at their aborted hillside picnic two nights before.
They were communicating, Laura realized. The glowing lights were optical cables. But they can talk to each other with microwaves, Laura remembered as she waited silently. Radio silence… They're at war.
But with whom? Only other robots could listen in on their transmissions. Laura looked down the empty boulevard. The burned and cut torso of the Model Seven lay crumpled just under the statue of the woman with the globe.
There was a Model Seven and a Model Eight on the asteroid.
"Hey!" she said in a raised voice. The robots didn't move. "Hey! I've got to go! I've got to get to the computer center!" she said loudly, enunciating each word.
The robot unplugged its connector from Hightop. They snapped their chest panels closed and turned toward Laura in unison. They walked past her up the boulevard toward the statue.
She turned to look at them. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" she shouted. "The computer center is that way!"
They didn't even slow down. "That way!" she yelled, jabbing her finger in the opposite direction.
Hightop stopped and held his hand out to Laura. They had plans of their own that were more important.
Laura grabbed her pounding head with both hands. She had to decide whether to go with them or to go alone. The decision was immense, and it was a toss-up.
They stood there unmoving. No face or voice to [missing]. Just a machine.
"Where are you headed?" she asked. "Could you point!" she shouted. She even showed them how.
Nothing. Nothing but a hand held out by Hightop. It was an extension of Gray. His tool. His most trusted. It was like a hand held out by Gray himself.
And it had a plan.
Laura turned to follow the two robots up the hill. "I'm not going in there," she said as they stood at the edge of the jungle. "No way! Uh-uh." She was shaking her head and waving her arms in front of her.
They cabled up to each other again. When the thin ribbon was stowed away, Hightop's companion grabbed Laura by the waist. She screamed in shock as it picked her up. She began bicycle-kicking the air. The robot raised her high off the ground, and Hightop turned to look away.
"Hightop!" she shouted, kicking his hard back with the toes of her running shoes. She was close enough to pound his head with her hands. "Hightop!"
His skin was soft and smooth. The strange feel of it made Laura stop struggling. She grabbed onto his shoulders. Her feet found the equipment belt at his waist. She clung there on Hightop's back, her head ten feet off the ground. Hightop headed for the jungle ahead.
It was a piggyback ride. She owed him an apology. "I, uhm—" she said. "Sorry about that."
Hightop walked straight into the jungle without slowing. The black branches cracked in a thousand places. They scraped along the robot's sides and swatted at Laura from behind. Hightop used his hands to clear a path ahead with great squeezes and twists of the protruding branches, but his body did most of the damage. From his chest and legs and feet there came a constant din.
They traveled through the jungle with ease. The Model Eight to the rear ensured that no limbs sprung back onto Laura.
Laura climbed closer to the robot's ear and shouted, "Hey… where're we going?"
The robot made no move to respond.
"Hightop," Laura said in a loud voice, "listen to me. I'm scared. I'm really, really scared. Now I know you can't talk, but if you can understand me, please give me some kind of sign that you're not going to take me into the jungle and do something terrible to me. Please!"
The two robots stopped, and all at once there was silence.
Hightop's head turned with the faintest of whirs. When his face was visible, he raised his fingertips to a grill. He then reached over his shoulder toward Laura.
The smooth, flat fingers gently touched Laura's cheek with a gentle caress.
The procession moved on. Laura had no idea how far they traveled. She had no idea where she was. What little sense of direction she possessed had been lost.
Hightop stopped, then slowly knelt to the ground — crushing the brush underneath. The night was black as coal on the floor of the jungle. Laura took Hightop's move as her cue and climbed down.
Her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, and then she saw the robots all around. They were everywhere, kneeling on the ground just like Hightop. They faced the same way, as if in prayer. There were dozens and dozens of them.
Laura stumbled backward — away from the menacing forms that surrounded her. Despite the noise she made, the robots all remained motionless.