Crewe flipped over the lapel of his jacket; a small, highly polished badge glinted there. "You know better than to interfere with a Concordiat officer," he said.
"Not so fast, Crewe," a dark-haired, narrow-faced fellow spoke up. "You're out of line. I heard about you Disposal men. Your job is locating old ammo dumps, abandoned equipment, stuff like that. Bobby's not abandoned. He's town property. Has been for near thirty years."
"Nonsense. This is battle equipment, the property of the Space Arm-"
Blauvelt was smiling lopsidedly. "Uh-uh. We've got salvage rights. No title, but we can make one up in a hurry. Official. I'm the Mayor here, and District Governor."
"This thing is a menace to every man, woman, and child in the settlement," Crewe snapped. "My job is to prevent tragedy-"
"Forget Bobby," Blauvelt cut in. He waved a hand at the jungle wall beyond the tilled fields. "There's a hundred million square miles of virgin territory out there," he said. "You can do what you like out there. I'll even sell you provisions. But just leave our mascot be, understand?"
Crewe looked at him, looked around at the other men.
"You're a fool," he said. "You're all fools." He turned and walked away, stiff-backed.
In the room he had rented in the town's lone boardinghouse, Crewe opened his baggage and took out a small, gray-plastic-cased instrument. The three children of the landlord who were watching from the latchless door edged closer.
"Gee, is that a real star radio?" the eldest, a skinny, long-necked lad of twelve asked.
"No," Crewe said shortly. The boy blushed and hung his head.
"It's a command transmitter," Crewe said, relenting. "It's designed for talking to fighting machines, giving them orders. They'll only respond to the special shaped-wave signal this puts out." He flicked a switch, and an indicator light glowed on the side of the case.
"You mean like Bobby?" the boy asked.
"Like Bobby used to be." Crewe switched off the transmitter.
"Bobby's swell," another child said. "He tells us stories about when he was in the war."
"He's got medals," the first boy said. "Were you in the war, mister?"
"I'm not quite that old," Crewe said.
"Bobby's older'n grandad."
"You boys had better run along," Crewe said. "I have to…" He broke off, cocked his head, listening. There were shouts outside; someone was calling his name.
Crewe pushed through the boys and went quickly along the hall, stepped through the door onto the boardwalk. He felt rather than heard a slow, heavy thudding, a chorus of shrill squeaks, a metallic groaning. A red-faced man was running toward him from the square.
"It's Bobby!" he shouted. "He's moving! What'd you do to him, Crewe?"
Crewe brushed past the man, ran toward the plaza. The Bolo appeared at the end of the street, moving ponderously forward, trailing uprooted weeds and vines.
"He's headed straight for Spivac's warehouse!" someone yelled.
"Bobby! Stop there!" Blauvelt came into view, running in the machine's wake. The big machine rumbled onward, executed a half-left as Crewe reached the plaza, clearing the corner of a building by inches. It crushed a section of boardwalk to splinters, advanced across a storage yard. A stack of rough-cut lumber toppled, spilled across the dusty ground. The Bolo trampled a board fence, headed out across a tilled field. Blauvelt whirled on Crewe.
"This is your doing! We never had trouble before-"
"Never mind that! Have you got a field car?"
"We-" Blauvelt checked himself. "What if we have?"
"I can stop it-but I have to be close. It will be into the jungle in another minute. My car can't navigate there."
"Let him go," a man said, breathing hard from his run. "He can't do no harm out there."
"Who'd of thought it?" another man said. "Setting there all them years-who'd of thought he could travel like that?"
"Your so-called mascot might have more surprises in store for you," Crewe snapped. "Get me a car, fast! This is an official requisition, Blauvelt!"
There was a silence, broken only by the distant crashing of timber as the Bolo moved into the edge of the forest. Hundred-foot trees leaned and went down before its advance.
"Let him go," Blauvelt said. "Like Stinzi says, he can't hurt anything."
"What if he turns back?"
"Hell," a man muttered. "Old Bobby wouldn't hurt us…"
"That car," Crewe snarled. "You're wasting valuable time."
Blauvelt frowned. "All right-but you don't make a move unless it looks like he's going to come back and hit the town. Clear?"
"Let's go."
Blauvelt led the way at a trot toward the town garage.
The Bolo's trail was a twenty-five foot wide swath cut through the virgin jungle; the tread-prints were pressed eighteen inches into the black loam, where it showed among the jumble of fallen branches.
"It's moving at about twenty miles an hour, faster than we can go," Crewe said. "If it holds its present track, the curve will bring it back to your town in about five hours."
"He'll sheer off," Blauvelt said.
"Maybe. But we won't risk it. Pick up a heading of 270°, Blauvelt. We'll try an intercept by cutting across the circle."
Blauvelt complied wordlessly. The car moved ahead in the deep green gloom under the huge shaggy-barked trees. Oversized insects buzzed and thumped against the canopy. Small and medium lizards hopped, darted, flapped. Fern leaves as big as awnings scraped along the car as it clambered over loops and coils of tough root, leaving streaks of plant juice across the clear plastic. Once they grated against an exposed ridge of crumbling brown rock; flakes as big as saucers scaled off, exposing dull metal.
"Dorsal fin of a scout-boat," Crewe said. "That's what's left of what was supposed to be a corrosion resistant alloy."
They passed more evidences of a long-ago battle: the massive, shattered breech mechanism of a platform-mounted Hellbore, the gutted chassis of what might have been a bomb car, portions of a downed aircraft, fragments of shattered armor. Many of the relics were of Terran design, but often it was the curiously curved, spidery lines of a rusted Axorc microgun or implosion projector that poked through the greenery.
"It must have been a heavy action," Crewe said. "One of the ones toward the end that didn't get much notice at the time. There's stuff here I've never seen before, experimental types, I imagine, rushed in by the enemy for a last-ditch stand."
Blauvelt grunted.
"Contact in another minute or so," Crewe said.
As Blauvelt opened his mouth to reply, there was a blinding flash, a violent impact, and the jungle erupted in their faces.
The seat webbing was cutting into Crewe's ribs. His ears were filled with a high, steady ringing; there was a taste of brass in his mouth. His head throbbed in time with the thudding of his heart.
The car was on its side, the interior a jumble of loose objects, torn wiring, broken plastic. Blauvelt was half under him, groaning. He slid off him, saw that he was groggy but conscious.
"Changed your mind yet about your harmless pet?" he asked, wiping a trickle of blood from his right eye. "Let's get clear before he fires those empty guns again. Can you walk?"
Blauvelt mumbled, crawled out through the broken canopy. Crewe groped through debris for the command transmitter-
"Good God," Blauvelt croaked. Crewe twisted, saw the high, narrow, iodine-dark shape of the alien machine perched on jointed crawler-legs fifty feet away, framed by blast-scorched foliage. Its multiple-barreled micro-gun battery was aimed dead at the overturned car.
"Don't move a muscle," Crewe whispered. Sweat trickled down his face. An insect, like a stub-winged four-inch dragonfly, came and buzzed about them, moved on. Hot metal pinged, contracting. Instantly, the alien hunter-killer moved forward another six feet, depressing its gun muzzles.
"Run for it!" Blauvelt cried. He came to his feet in a scrabbling lunge; the enemy machine swung to track him…