Without turning her head, she tried to determine where she was. The robot was walking slowly parallel with the wall of the computer center. There was no one anywhere in sight. High in the sky above she could see three smudgy streaks of smoke brightly lit the crisscrossing beams of powerful spotlights. The stench of exhaust filled the air. The rockets were gone, but not long gone.
"Would you…" she croaked from her dry throat, then was wracked by coughs that sent still more pain shooting through her body. "Would you put me down?" she managed, but the robot showed no sign of having heard her.
"Please?" He continued on, totally unfazed.
Laura looked around again. He was not taking her toward the jungle, but toward the computer center entrance.
She remembered seeing the Model Eight on the lawn returning from its patrol of the beach. She looked back up at his face, just two feet away. "Hightop." His pace slowed, and he glanced down at her, then resumed his purposeful stride.
She heard the sound of screeching tires and looked up at the road by the computer center entrance. From the car emerged a lone figure.
It was dark, but she knew who it was and she relaxed in the robot's arms, allowing the pain to again stab at her.
"Laura!" Gray shouted from some distance — sprinting toward her.
"I'm o-kay," she replied, while staring straight up at the sky, wincing at the jabs of pain caused by the effort.
She knew he had arrived when the robot stopped.
"Give her to me please, Hightop," Gray said in a normal tone.
The robot carefully lowered her toward Gray's waiting arms.
"Wait!" Laura said, and Hightop froze.
Laura looked up into the expressionless face directly above her. It had two shiny black lenses for eyes. A slightly raised and vented triangle for a nose. Thin metal pores surrounded by raised fringes where a mouth should be. Ears covered in black foam like over a microphone.
She again got the distinct impression of a man inside a space suit. Only the scale of the machine defied the description.
Laura brought the tips of her fingers to her lips and kissed, then raised them to the robot's cheek. The light gray membrane gave slightly under her fingertips. It was so smooth, so soft… but it was unexpectedly cold to the touch.
Hightop handed her gently to Gray, and Laura tried not to cry out in pain.
Gray stared down at her through eyes sick with worry. He held her high in his arms and tight to his body, his face close to hers. He lowered his forehead onto her shoulder and rested it there for a moment — his head next to hers. He then opened his eyes and started for the road.
He carried her in silence — his eyes straight ahead.
After a short distance, Laura said, "I can probably walk," although she wasn't entirely sure. Gray continued on without responding, every bit as talkative as the robot. "How did you know where I was?" she asked.
"The computer," he replied without looking down.
"Did the launches go all right?"
"What the hell were you doing in the restricted area?" he shot at her, his teeth bared in anger. He shook his head, his eyes still fixed on some far-off point. "On the roof of the goddamn computer center, for Christ's sake?"
"You can put me down right now," she said in a tone as loud and as unfriendly as his had been. Gray didn't bother to look at her.
"Put me down!" she said, kicking her feet.
With his jaw set firmly, Gray stopped. She half expected him to dump her straight onto the grassy lawn, but he lowered her gently to her feet.
She hurt all over, but she could put weight on her feet and she tried as best as she could to straighten up.
"You didn't answer my question!" he snapped.
"You told me to get a good view of your little fireworks show!" she shot back. He glared at her. "I broke one of your little rules, so sue me!"
"Why do you think we call this the restricted area? Because I'm some kind of security freak? We're less than half a mile from pad A!" he shouted, throwing his arm up in the direction of the nearby launch facility. "The radiant heat alone could've given you first-, maybe second-degree burns. And God forbid we had to abort at low altitude or something went wrong on a pad!"
His outburst changed Laura's mood entirely. Rather than feeling her anger feed off his, she felt it wash away. "I'm okay," she said softly as she reached up to put a hand on his arm.
Gray opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Slowly he filled his lungs with air, which he then expelled noisily. He calmed, seemingly exhausted by the effort.
With a sudden jerk of his head he looked up to the sky. A heartbeat later Laura heard the sound of jet engines through the thick cotton in her ears. Sharp whines rose to a sudden roar, which caused both of them to flinch. The noise was followed by the sight of two jets passing low over the island. The glowing hot tailpipes split apart as the two aircraft banked steeply to either side of the mountain. When they reappeared, they were flying wingtip to wingtip heading back out to the sea in the far distance. "What was that?" Laura asked.
"There's a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier out there paying us a visit."
"What do they want?" Gray looked tired again — at the end of his rope.
"Control. They want to control me."
"Well… what're you gonna do? I mean, Joseph… an aircraft carrier? Jets?"
"They won't try to stop me before I decelerate the asteroid. They can't risk it. But after…" He worked his teeth together. "I'll level this island before I let them have it."
She measured him by the expression he wore, and she had no doubt he was telling the truth. "But would you kill to keep it?" she asked, and he looked away. "Would you kill those sailors and pilots?"
Still he said nothing. "Joseph, that's one thing I have to know. It's nonnegotiable."
After a long pause, he said simply, "No." The admission sounded like a defeat. He scanned his creations with his gaze, but this survey seemed to evoke little pleasure. "What I'm doing here, Laura, is important. It may just be the most important thing ever undertaken in human history. But I couldn't take the lives of those men. That's asking too much."
"Joseph, listen to me. Nobody's asking anything of you."
He reflected upon her statement in silence, and then finally he said, "I'm asking it of myself. Now, let's get you seen about."
Gray headed for the stairs to the computer center entrance, and Laura took a few painful steps to follow. "Joseph?" she called out, and he returned to her immediately. He slipped his arm around the small of her waist, and she lowered her head onto his shoulder for the short walk down the computer center steps.
Laura limped into the conference room, and everyone looked up.
Hoblenz was the first to speak. "You all right there, Doc?"
"Just a few scrapes and bruises. It's nothing, really." Her chair next to Gray was empty, and Gray stood to pull it back from the table.
"I hope Hightop treated you well," Dr. Griffith said with a broad smile on his face as she sat.
"He was quite a gentleman," Laura replied, feeling much better after a couple of codeine tablets.
Griffith laughed loudly at her remark. Now that the Model Eights were out of the closet, he glowed with pride for his pets.
No one else at the table was smiling. "I'm sorry I interrupted," Laura said. "I feel like I've crashed a wake."
Gray undertook to fill her in. "Dorothy was just saying that something inside the computer has started a stampede. The viruses are fleeing some threat. They're trying to copy themselves all over the place, replicating massively as if they were being stalked and threatened with extinction."