Heim ran a tongue which had gone wooden over his lips. “It’s moving quicker than we can, I think,” he said. “Well have to settle with it one way or another.” Decision came. “Wait here. I’ll go back and see.”
Vadász and Jocelyn caught his arms simultaneously. He shook them off. “Damnation, I’m still the captain,” he rapped. “Let me be. That’s an order.”
He started off. The hurt in his muscles dwindled. Instead there came an odd, tingling numbness. His mind felt unnaturally clear, he saw each twig and leaf on the haggard bushes around, felt how his feet struck soil and the impact that traveled through shins to knees, smelled his own foulness, heard the geysers boom at his back. Earth seemed infinitely remote, a memory of another existence or a dream he had once had, unreal; yes, despite its vividness this world was unreal too, as hollow as himself. I’m afraid, he thought across an unbridgeable abyss. That machine frightens me worse than anything ever did before.
He walked on. There was nothing else to do. The detector lattice swiveled stiffly about, focused invisible unfelt energies on him. The robot changed direction to intercept Several armor plates clashed loose. Blackness gaped behind them. The whole body was leprous with metal decay.
How long has it wandered this upland? For what?
The turret rotated. A port tried to open, got halfway, and stuck. The machine grated inside.
Another port at the front of the body slid back. A muzzle poked forth. The slug-thrower spoke.
Heim saw dirt fly where the bullets hit, a hundred meters short He whipped about and ran.
The thing growled. Swaying on an unstable air cushion, it chased him. The gun raved a minute longer before stopping.
The Slaughter Machines! beat through Heim’s skull, in time with his gasps for wind and the jar of footfalls. Robots to guard whatever there was where that crater is now. Guard it by killing anything that moved. But a missile got through, and the robots alone were left, and hunted and killed till they wore out, and a few are still prowling these barrens, and today one of them has found us.
He reached the others, stumbled, and rolled, in a heap. For a minute he lay half stunned.
Vadász and Uthg-a-K’thaq helped him rise. Jocelyn hung onto his hand and wept “I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.”
“He would be,” said Vadász, “but explosives have deteriorated… Watch out!”
Another port had opened, another tube thrust clear. Across the distance, through a red blur in his vision, Heim saw coils, a laser projector, and lasers don’t age. He grabbed Jocelyn to pull her behind him. A beam sickled, brighter than the sun. It struck well to the left Bushes became charcoal and smoke. The beam traced a madman’s course, boiled a rivulet, shot skyward, winked out.
“The aiming mechanism,” Uthg-a-K’thaq said. For once his own voice was shaken. “Has worn to uselessness.”
“Not if the thing gets close,” Bragdon whimpered. “Or it can slugger us, or crush us, or—Run!”
The terror had gone from Heim. He felt a cold uplifting: no pleasure of combat, for he knew how thin their chance was, but total aliveness. The matter grew crystalline in his mind, and he said: “Don’t. You’ll wear yourself out in no time. This is a walking race. If we can get to Thundersmoke, or even to those boulders, ahead of the bullets, we may be able to hide. No, don’t shed your packs. We won’t be allowed to retrieve diem. Walk.”
They struck out. “Shall I sing for you?” Vadász asked. “No need,” Heim said.
“I thought not. Good. I do need the breath.” Heim took the rear. The engine coughed and banged behind. Again and again he could not control himself, he must stop and turn about for a look. Always death was closer. Old, old, crumbling, crazed, half blind and half palsied, the thing which had never been alive and would not die shivered along just a little faster than a man could stride on Staurn. The poise from it was an endless metal agony. Once he saw an armor plate drop off, once the air drive went awry and almost toppled the ponderous bulk; but it came on, came on.
And the rocks of refuge ahead grew nearer with nightmare slowness.
Jocelyn began to stagger. Heim moved to give her support. As if the change in configuration had tripped some relay in a rotted computer, the slug-thrower spat anew. Several of the bullets buzzed past them.
Bragdon joined Heim on the woman’s other side. “Let me help,” he panted. She leaned on them both. “We… won’t make it,” Bragdon said.
“We might,” Heim snapped, for he dreaded a return of that negation he had seen in Jocelyn this dawn.
“We could… maybe… if we moved steady. You could. Not me. Not her. Got to rest.”
Bragdon left the remainder unsaid: The pursuer needs no rest.
“Get into that water, among those rocks,” Vadász said. “Lie low. Then maybe that pokolgep cannot see us.”
Heim followed his gesture. Somewhat to the left, a scatter of stones lay in a muddy pool.
None were bigger than a man, but—A light artillery shell passed overhead. The cannon crack rang back off the unattainable cliffs. The shell struck, splintered a boulder, but did not explode. “Let’s try,” he agreed.
They splashed through muck and crouched belly-down in shallow red water. Heim was careful to hold his automatic free, Vadász his laser. Pistols seemed pathetic against the monster’s size and armament; but a man took care of his weapons. Mist blown from Thundersmoke pattered upon them. Heim wiped his faceplate and stared between two rocks.
The machine had halted. It snarled to itself, jerked guns right and left, swept detectors through a hemisphere. “Good Lord,” Vadász whispered, “I think indeed it has lost us.”
“The water cools oww our in’rared radiation,” Uthg-a-K’thaq replied as hushedly. “We are maywe Under its radar weams, and maywe the owtical circuits are wad. Or the memory system has gone to wieces.”
“If only—No.” Heim’s pistol sank in his fist.
“What did you think?” Jocelyn asked, frantic.
“How to disable what’s left of the detector lattice. Could be done by a laser beam—see that exposed power cable? Only you’d never get close enough before you were spotted and killed.”
The short pulse-stopping hope, that the machine might give up and go away, crashed. It started grinding about a spiral, a search curve. Heim plotted that path and muttered: “Should be here inside half an hour. However, first it’ll move away. Which gains us some slight meterage. Be ready to start when I give you the word.”
“We’ll never make it, I tell you,” Bragdon protested.
“Not so loud, you crudhead. We don’t know that the thing hasn’t still got ears.”
As if in response, the robot stopped. It rested a moment on the whirr from its air blowers; the lattice horns wove around, tilted, came to a halt… It continued along the spiral.
“You see?” Vadász said with disgust. “Keep trying, Bragdon. You may yet destroy us.”
The Peaceman made a strangled noise. “Don’t,” Jocelyn begged. “Please.”
Uthg-a-K’thaq stirred. “A thought,” he belched. “I do in truth weliewe we cannot outrun the enemy to shelter. But can Slaughter Machines count?”
Vadász’s breath hissed inward. “What’s this?”
“We hawe lit-tle to lose,” the Naqsan said. “Let us run, excewt for one who waits here and keews the laser. Can he get unnoticed in cutting range ow the wistol weam—”
“He could be killed too easily,” Heim said. But hope shuddered anew in him. Why not?