"What could go wrong with a module like that?" Frigate said.
"Nothing," Loga said. "If it's inserted properly. I suspect human error. If the card was put in upside down, the circuits would operate properly. But every time there was a voltage surge, one of the circuits would be slightly damaged. There aren't many surges, but over a long period of time the damage would be cumulative. The error would have been noticed long ago—if the technicians hadn't been dead."
He put the card inside a metal cube and attached it to a leg-piece of armor just above the knee.
"All he has to do is press the inset button in the cube, and the magnetism will be canceled. The cube is thick enough to withstand many shots from the beamers."
All of Goring's armor was put on him except the globular helmet. Loga poured out the yellow wine into exquisite goblets brought from his apartment. He lifted his high and said, "To your success, Hermann Goring. May the Creator be with you."
"With all of us," Hermann said.
They drank, and the helmet was secured. Goring climbed up a short ladder into the top of the submarine and got himself with some difficulty into the hatch. Loga went up and, looking down into the hatchway, repeated the operation instructions. Then he closed the hatch.
Loga, as chief of operations, took the chair in the revolving platform. The others seated themselves before control consoles and began the adjustments taught them by the Ethical.
The first of the armed coffin-shapes lifted and headed toward the doorway. That was Burton's. Behind it came Alice's, then the others. They single-filed through the exit and turned right.
When all were out, the submarine rose from the floor and followed the robots.
The descent to the floor just below sea level took him fifteen minutes. He halted his robot before a closed door above which were letters in alto-relief. Burton activated the beamers, and presently the door was cut on one side from its top to the bottom. He moved his robot over and melted through another section. Then he rammed the machine into the middle, and the cut section fell backward.
Burton saw a gigantic room filled with equipment. He shot his machine toward a closed doorway in the opposite wall. Before it got there, sections of the wall slid back, and the sphere ends of beamers moved out. Scarlet lines spat from them.
Burton moved the controls on the panel so that his robot angled upward to the right. He held it then and pressed the trigger-activation button. Scarlet lines streamed out along the edges of the screen, and he had the satisfaction of seeing a globe explode. Fragments flew against the screen but did no damage.
A few seconds later, the screen went blank.
One of the .computer's weapons had destroyed the camera on top of the robot.
Burton cursed, and he cut off the beamers. There was nothing he could do except watch. He pressed the button that would tie his computer in with one of Loga's cameras. Instantly, he could see from a camera on the wall above the doorway the robots had entered. His robot hovered ten feet above the floor, its front end pointed up at the beamers on the other wall. The robots were in a semicircle so that they wouldn't get hit by their companions.
The last beamers in the room blew up, shifting the view from one camera to the next as one room after another was conquered. Alice's robot was melted down. De Marbot's camera was destroyed. Tai-Peng's was pierced by three beams at once, and it fell as some vital part was melted.
The others went dead one by one until only the submarine was left. The dirigible-shaped craft took over then, cutting through two doors, its thick hull drilled into by the computer's beamers.
The submarine came to a doorway wide enough to admit it but crossed by beams from ten weapons. Hermann shot his craft through it and came out into the next room with a small section of the stern cut off and many deep holes in the hull.
Ahead of him, at the opposite war), was another entrance. Here was where he would have to abandon his craft. He drove it at great speed, slowed it a few feet from the doorway, and, while scarlet lines melted holes in the hull, climbed out. Immediately, the beamers transferred to him.
Goring fell out onto the floor, shielded from half of the weapons by the vessel but the target of the others. He got up slowly and staggered through the door entrance. Ranks of beamers turned toward him and tracked him as he ran toward the other doorway leading to the valve room. Just before he got to it, a door slid out from a recess and blocked the entrance. Ignoring the beamers, he began cutting through the door. He made a small hole, and he removed the cube holding the card and threw it ahead of him. Then he crawled through the hole, his beamer in his hand.
Burton and the others could hear his heavy breathing.
A cry of agony.
"My leg!"
"You're almost there!" Loga shouted.
Purplish vapors poured out through the hole.
"Poison gas," Loga said.
The screen shifted the view to the valve room. This was large and on the right-hand wall (from Hermann) a down-curving metal tube came out of the wall about ten feet above the floor. Near it was a small metal box on a table from which thin cables ran to another box. The front of the box had recesses from which the ends of modules stuck out.
Goring crawled to the cube as at least a hundred beamers poured their ravening energy into his suit.
His voice came to the watchers.
"I can't stand it. I'm going to faint."
"Hang on, Goring!" Loga said. "A minute more, and you'll have done it!"
They saw the bulky gray figure grab the cube, turn it over, and let the card module drop out. They saw Hermann pick it up and crawl toward the module box. They heard his scream and saw him fall forward. The module fell from his fingers at the foot of the table.
The scarlet lines continued their fire and did not stop until the armor was riddled with holes.
There was a long silence.
Burton heaved a deep sigh and turned his equipment off. The others did the same. Burton went up onto the platform and stood behind Loga. His screen was still alive, but now it showed a pulsing many-colored figure, a globe-shape with extending and withdrawing tentacles.
Loga was bent forward, his elbows on the edge of the panel, his hands against his face.
Burton said, "What's that?"
He knew it was the picture of a wathan, but he didn't know why it was on the screen.
Loga removed his hands and stared at the screen.
"I put a frequency tracker on Goring."
"That's he?"
"Yes."
"Then he didn't Go On?"
"No. He's with the others."
What do we do now?
That was the question of all.
Loga wanted to kill the computer before it captured more wathans, and then he would duplicate it at its predata stage. But he also hoped hopelessly that someone might think of something which would solve the problem before the wathans were released. He was mentally paralyzed and would evidently do nothing unless an impulse broke through and he pressed the fatal button.
The others were thinking hard. They put their speculations, their questions, into their computers. Always, there was some flaw in their schemes.
Burton went down several times to the floor below and stood or paced for hours while he gazed at the splendid spectacle of the swirling wathans. Were his parents among them? Ayesha? Isabel? Walter Scott, the nephew of Sir Walter Scott the author, and a great friend of his in India? Dr. Steinhaeuser? George Sala? Swinburne? His sister and brother? Speke? His grandfather Baker, who'd cheated him out of a fortune by dropping dead just before he could change his will? Bloody-minded and cruel King Gelele of Dahomey, who didn't know that he was bloody-minded and cruel since he was only doing what his society required of him? Which was no acceptable excuse.