Under the lip of the cave, where the rogue had abandoned it, the hulk of the robot lay tossed aside. The rogue entered into it, flexed its transcience fields, lifted it into space and, bearing the refrigerated box of food, retraced the long winding route, sank down through the frozen light of that misty opal sun. . .
Molly was awake.
The rogue, wearing the egg-shaped body of the robot, brought itself up sharply and hung there just out of sight, the food box dangling from its effectors. Molly was no longer stretched out asleep on the cushions it had brought for her. She was in the spidery metal tower, crouched before the bright, ancient control panel, fumbling frantically with the radio. The rogue listened through the ears of the robot:
"Calling Monitor Quamodian!" the girl whimpered. "Oh, please! Andy! Anyone!"
The rogue knew that the radio was dead; it hung there, letting her speak, listening.
"Molly Zaldivar calling Monitor Quamodian! Andy, please listen. I'm trapped in a cave. That thing—the rogue star, whatever it is—has me trapped here, because it says—it says it loves me! And it won't let me go."
Her head fell forward, her hand still on the useless switch of the radio. She sobbed, "Oh, please help me. It's a hateful, horrible thing—a monster. I—I tried to deceive it, to make it let me go by pretending to— to like it. But it won't. . ."
The rogue, in the persona of the broken transcience robot, sank slowly toward her, burdened with the box of food that it had brought for her. It was struggling in its complex mind with concepts for which it had no names, and little understanding. Betrayal.
Anger.
Revenge.
19
The Reefer's deep-set eyes glowed like a robot's plasma patch. "Make this thing move, Quamodian!" he roared. "I want that critter for my trophy room!"
Andy Quam hissed in annoyance, "Be still, Reefer! I'm not interested in your game collection. It's Molly Zaldivar's life that concerns me." He bent to the panel of his flyer. He was indeed making it move, as fast as he could, cutting out the autonomic pilot circuits and racing the craft along on manual override. It was a flimsy enough bolt to hurl at a creature that ranked with stars for majesty and might—a simple atmosphere flyer, with a few puny transflection beams that could be used as weapons. But it was all he had.
They arrowed through the chill morning air, along the road toward the misty blue ridge. Over the Reefer's hill a smudge of smoke still lifted and wandered away with the wind. Quamodian's eyes were on it when his transceiver clicked into life. For a moment the speakers hummed and crackled, but there was no voice. Andy Quam scowled with annoyance and leaned to listen.
"What is it?" growled the Reefer, brows knotted under their blond tangle of hair.
"I don't know," said Andy Quam. "Nothing. Listen."
But there was no voice, only the questing carrier sounds. For a moment Andy Quam thought it might have been Molly, and the thought lit his mind with a living image of her red-glinting hair, her haunting oval face, her laughing eyes. But it was not her voice that came from the speaker.
Something was trying to talk to him. An uncanny voice—slow, toneless, laborious. It chilled him with alarm.
"What's that?" demanded the Reefer again. "Quamodian, what are you doing?"
"Be still!" Andy Quam touched the dial, trying to bring the sound in more clearly. It was not a robot's clipped and penetrating whine. It lacked the mechanical precision of an automatic translator. The scattered sounds he made out were not from the universal signal system of the intergalactic society. They were Earth-English. Yet they were somehow alien, monstrously inhuman. It was not a message; it was more like some great, tortured soliloquy, a voice that rambled on and on, brokenly and angrily. The distorted and intermittent signal had no clear message, but it filled Andy Quam with fear.
Climbing slightly, he pushed the flyer to transsonic speed. The narrow black ribbon of road unreeled. Higher hills flashed beneath him. A building flickered. The leaning smudge of smoke was a momentary blur.
Something crept along the road below him.
The Reefer caught Andy Quam's shoulder. "It's that machine!" he bellowed. "An old Plan of Man earthmover—the rogue's using it. Blast it, man! Drive him out into the open!"
Quamodian shrugged the great paw off his arm, and bent to stare down at the road. It was huge and clumsy, lumbering ponderously toward the crest of the ridge on grotesque old caterpillar tracks. It waved claw-ended handling forks around its angular, orange-painted cab.
"Flyer," ordered Andy Quam, "pot that thing for me."
There was a faint deep hiss of departing missiles as the flyer obediently flung out a burst of landing flares at the machine. They were not meant as weapons but would do a weapon's work; they missed, stitching a row of pits across the pavement in front of the machine.
"Sorry, Monitor Quamodian," the flyer apologized mournfully. "I'm not really designed for this sort of work."
"Get its tracks!" Quamodian ordered. "Use all the flares if you have to. Stop it!"
The machine plowed recklessly through the shower of flame. Quamodian spun the flyer around, returned it, passing low over the machine; a new spray of flame darted out toward it, struck it, and clung. The machine slid sidewise, seeming to float on that pool of fire, and Andy Quam saw a broken track flap wildly.
The machine stopped. At a word, the flyer took over automatic control and hovered; the two men looked down.
The machine lay, silent and broken, on the pitted road, while choking fumes rose from the remnants of the flares. Andy Quam turned to the Reefer and demanded, "I've shot it up for you. It doesn't seem to have accomplished a thing. Now what?"
"Now go on!" roared the Reefer. "You've just killed one of the rogue's tools, we haven't touched the beast itself yet. Go on and dig it out!"
Quamodian shrugged, was about to order the flyer on. . .
The klaxon hooted. Red signals blossomed in holographic solidity on the panel. The bubble marker circled a flying object, coming low and fast from the woods behind. It shone with a pale but strange greenish radiation.
"It is the space creature called the sleeth, Monitor Quamodian," reported the flyer. "Indications are that it is under the control of the in-tellectic being you seek."
The Reefer was briefer and more furioife. "That's my critter!" he howled. "Careful! It can eat up a dozen like us any day!"
"Careful!" growled Andreas Quamodian. "Let your animal be careful! Flyer, got any flares left?"
"Two racks, Monitor Quamodian," the machine reported.
"Smash that thing with them!"
The jet leaped away—but, curiously, the flares failed to detonate. Their tracer trails ended in faint red sparks near the oncoming object.
"The sleeth's blanketing them," snarled the Reefer. "You'll have to do better than that!"
"Fire what's left!" shouted Andy Quam, and slapped down the manual override, taking control of the little flyer's transflector beams. He spun them into high, reached out with their pale, deadly fingers toward the sleeth which was growing ever larger before him, the second flight of flares dimming to darkness just like the first.
A sudden lurch threw him against the control panel. "Mal-function, Monitor Qua-modian," the flyer jerked out. "Pow-er fail-ure . . ."
The propulsion field was failing even as the reaching transflection beams were paling and dying. The greenish glow of the sleeth brightened suddenly; the flyer's klaxon tried to blare, succeeded in rattling a crash alert.