"Hold on!" bawled Quamodian. "We're going to hit. . ."
And they did; they hit hard, the emergency shields failing to function; hard enough to jolt both men like dolls knocked over in a coconut shy. The sleeth soared over them and halted. It was a terrifying sight, horse-sized, catlike, tapered muscles bulging under the sleek black fur. Blazing green, enormous and cold, its eyes bulged blindly out at them.
The Reefer pulled himself together and croaked, "They—they can kill us, Quamodian. Those eyes!"
Quamodian didn't need the warning. There was something in those eyes that was reaching into his mind, freezing his will, icing his spine and muscles. He struggled to make his limbs obey him, and reached for the little hand weapon he kept under the seat of the flyer; but the icy, penetrating numbness had gone too far. He touched the gun, almost caught it, dropped it and sent it skittering across the tipped floor of the flyer; and the sleeth hung there, staring blindly down through the faint shimmer of its transflection field, just touching a fallen tree with one horrendous claw . . .
The great blind eyes seemed suddenly smaller. The frightful currents of cold that had drenched Andy Quam's body seemed somehow to recede. He could not move, he was not his own master any longer; but at least, he thought, he was not dying helplessly any more; for some reason the creature had halted the poisonous flow of radiation that had drained the flyer's power banks and nearly drained their lives.
The Reefer gasped hoarsely, "Knew it! Knew it couldn't kill its master." And incredibly, haltingly that big yellow-haired bear of a man was forcing himself to stand erect, lurching with agonizing slowness to the door, dropping to the ground and willing himself to stand erect again, next to the great sleek bulk of the creature from space.
And the forgotten radio speaker of the flyer abruptly rattled harshly and spoke: "Go away, Quamodian. I give you your life—but go!" It was the voice he had heard before, inhuman, unalive, terrifying. Andy Quam fell back, finally drained of the last of his strength. He saw the great talons of the sleeth curve protectingly around the Reefer, clasp him and hold him; saw the great creature surge into the air and away, carrying the Reefer as it disappeared with fantastic speed toward the gap in the hills where the faint smudge of smoke still hung.
And then he felt his flyer rock slightly, twitch, and then slowly and painfully lift itself into the sky. It was not at his order that it flew, but its destination was not in question. It rose to a few hundred feet, turned and headed back for the town.
The hunters had failed. One was now himself a captive, being borne at transsonic speeds toward the cave where the rogue flexed its new powers, practiced at its new repertory of emotions and grew. One was helplessly returning the way he had come. And the girl they had tried to rescue was farther from Andy Quam's help than the farthest star.
Of one thing he was sure: he had been defeated. His mere human strength had not even sufficed to get him past the rogue's puppet, the sleeth. He would have no chance against the might of the rogue itself.
20
The rogue, wearing the borrowed body of the robot inspector, sank slowly through the cold opal light of the great bubble under the earth. The refrigerated box of food, held lightly in its transflection fields, seemed suddenly too heavy to carry, and the rogue let it drop.
It crashed to the seep-stained floor in a thunder that rolled around the cavern, split open, spilling out the little parcels of human food. The noise startled Molly Zaldivar. She looked up at the robot form, her face shocked and hollowed in that icy, lifeless light. A scream blazed through the echoing thunder.
For a moment, seeing the gleaming black egg-shaped body of the robot settling toward her, Molly had the wild hope that it was the familiar robot inspector from the Starchurch, somehow come to rescue her, perhaps with Andy Quam right behind. But the hope did not last long enough to survive the terror in her face. She got up stiffly, abandoning the useless radio, and climbed slowly down the spiral steps toward the bottom of the rock bubble.
The sweet high voice of the robot, modulated by the unpracticed mind of the rogue, spoke to her:
"Molly Zaldivar. Why did you speak falsely to me?"
She did not answer. There was a pause, while the rogue pondered its conflicting impulses. "I will not harm you," it droned at last. "You need not be afraid—because I love you, Molly Zaldivar."
Her face twisted and she lifted her hands to the floating robot. "If you love me, won't you let me go?" she cried.
"Because I love you—I can never let you go."
She shouted with all her strength, "Then I hate you, monster!" Her voice was hoarse and despairing; despairing, too, was the angry green radiance that surrounded her in the sight of the rogue, colors and patterns that spoke to him of fury. It left her standing there and soared away, wheeling around the spidery tower. Suddenly it felt the clothing of the robot that it wore confining; it slipped out, left the robot hanging mindlessly on its transflection fields and, once more a nearly invisible cloud of stripped electrons, perched on the metal rails just below the pale, milky mist of light that hung in the center of the sphere.
It spoke to her through the robot: "Molly Zaldivar, I am strong and you are weak. Your hatred cannot harm me. True?"
She shook her head without words, utterly weary.
"But I will not harm you—if I can avoid it, Molly Zaldivar. We will stay here—until you love me."
"Then I'll die here," she said tonelessly.
The rogue pondered the problem for many nanoseconds. It said at last, "Then I shall absorb you as you die. You will be a member of me, like Cliff Hawk."
The girl said, weakly, fearfully, then with gathering rage, "Oh, please —you mustn't! You say you love me—heaven knows what you mean by that—but if it means anything at all to you, you must let me go."
"Never, Molly Zaldivar."
"You can't keep me!"
"I can, Molly Zaldivar. I am stronger than you."
She shrieked, "But there are things which are stronger! Almalik! Almalik is stronger than you. And he will find you yet, even hiding here."
The rogue searched its memory patterns for a referent for the term "Almalik." Almost hesitantly it said, "What is 'Almalik'?"
"Almalik is the spokesman star for Cygnus. Almalik commands multitudes—fusorians and men, robots and stars. His multitudes will find you, here or anywhere. And even if you were as strong as Almalik, you are all alone while he has legions!"
The rogue's plasma rippled in thought. "I have met Almalik's robot," it said at last. "It is now a member of me."
"One robot! Almalik owns many millions."
The rogue did not reply. Thoughtfully it clung to the metallic rail of the cryptic old device, studying the girl. She was exhausted now, the green fire of her fury dying, waiting for a move from the rogue.
To the rogue, painfully learning the uses of those human qualities called emotions, Molly Zaldivar was a most confusing stimulus. There was enough of the residual identity of Cliff Hawk in the rogue to give force and direction to its feelings about Molly; it possessed attitude sets which could have been called "pity" or "love." The rogue recognized that the girl was small, and weak, and mortal, and afraid; it even felt some sort of impulse to ease her wild terror, heal her pain and rage. It simply had no effectors capable of the job.
At the same time it recognized that in a sense she represented a threat. The polarization of the other human, Andreas Quamodian, toward her was certain to produce an attempt on his part to interfere again. The rogue did not estimate that the attempt would be successful, but it might be an annoyance; and it took the precaution of detaching some part of its attention to invest its creatures, the sleeth and the handling machine, deploying them as scouts between Wisdom Creek and the mountains.