The sleeth, which had been hanging humming nearby, surged suddenly toward them. The Reefer flinched away, and the sleeth passed him by and darted out into the open air again. "You see, girl? Won't mind me a bit. Don't know what's got into him."
"Then you and I must lift him out!"
The Reefer spat into the rubble. "You? Couldn't lift yourself, I'd say; you're worn out. And I can't manage him by myself. Kill him if I tried."
"Then what can we do? Please, Reefer."
The Reefer looked past her, into the denser smoke that was rolling toward them down the tunnel. "Only one thing I know," he growled. "Shoot him for you, if you like. Better than letting him burn."
The rogue tired of the sleeth, thought for a moment of destroying it, then merely abandoned it to its own devices. It amused itself briefly by examining the state of those nonradiant assemblages of matter which had been so brutally tossed about by the sunbolts. It did not recognize them as instruments, machines, bits of human inventiveness; but it did see that they had been made functionless by the damage they had suffered, and that the chemical reactions now taking place in and among them were damaging them still further.
It understood, after a meditation of some nanoseconds, that the course of the fire was carrying it toward those radiant masses which it had not yet learned to think of as living. It did, however, realize that the same sort of damage that had blasted the machines would harm them as well; and that one of the radiances was visibly fading in any case.
It would be interesting, thought the infant rogue, to do something new. It had already removed the radiationless lump of matter from the radiant mass that was Cliff Hawk, using the sleeth as its proxy; that had been disappointing, nothing had happened.
But, it wondered, what if it were to soak up some of that radiation? It was a notion that attracted the rogue. It did not know why. It had not yet learned to recognize hunger.
14
First the robot required them to wait while it completed its minute of silent adoration, bobbing in its transflection field under the star-embossed dome of the church, its plasma rippling with the colors of devotion. Then it insisted on shepherding each of the children out of the building, locking the doors behind them, searching each empty room and corridor to make sure none had been forgotten. The church was homeostatic, of course; its receptors and proprioceptors could have taken care of all of that without attention. Then the robot proposed another delay while it transmitted an apparently endless message to Deneb; and all the while the boy, Rufe, was chattering with questions and eagerness, and Andy Quam's patience had long gone up in wrath. "Robot Inspector," he shouted, "if we're going, let's go! Molly Zaldivar may be in great danger, even dying!"
The robot swung toward him. "Monitor Quamodian," it sang, "patience! I assure you she is alive."
"How do you know?" he demanded.
The robot was silent.
"Preacher," the boy whispered, "leave him alone. That's the way he is. Does things at his own pace. Say! Are you going to ride his back?"
"Almalik! How do I know?" groaned Andy Quam. He glanced at his wrist timepiece, converted rapidly to Terrestrial equivalents, and hissed with exasperation. "In three hours Starday will be over. I won't need him then! But," he added painfully, tapping his foot on the tiled floor, "Molly needs me now".
The robot sang, "Monitor Quamodian, please be silent. I am having a most interesting discussion with three living companions on a planet of Deneb, eight robots and the star 61 Cygni."
"No!" roared Quamodian in astonishment. "You're not chattering away at a time like this! But you promised. . ."
The robot paused. Then, petulantly, "Oh, very well. Perhaps we may as well go, since your noise is disturbing me. Please follow. .
But it was too late for following; Andy Quam was already out the door, leaping toward the place where he had left his flyer, and the boy was trailing after him like a comet tail.
"I'll lead the way," sang the robot, raising the amplification of its external vocalizers until the church facade echoed. "I have instructed your guiding apparatus that the hundred-meter limit may be waived, as part of my voluntary Starday activity, permitted under the compact. . ."
Even at ninety decibels Andy Quam didn't hear the end of the sentence; he was already in the flyer, the boy close behind. He slammed the door and shouted, "Let's go! Follow that robot!"
"All right, Mr. Quamodian," cheerfully agreed the voice of his flyer. "I have my clearance now. Say! Wasn't it nice of the robot inspector to let you. . ."
"Shut up," snarled Andy Quam. "Just fly! I'm in a hurry."
Sulkily the flyer lifted itself off the ground, spun round like a top and aimed itself toward the waiting ovoid that was the robot, hanging in its transflection fields a few meters over the Starchurch. Quamodian muttered a curse as he picked himself up from where the sudden gyration had thrown him, the boy in his lap; but he said nothing to the flyer. "You sit there," he ordered Rufe. "Strap yourself in. Almalik knows what this stupid flyer will do next."
Aggrieved, the flyer began, "That's not fair. Mr. Qua. . ."
"I told you to shut up!"
The flyer shut up, with an audible, and intentional click and rasp of static, and Andy Quam and the boy peered away. It was full night, with bright stars hanging over the hills, though to the west the angry red glare of the swollen, surly sun was still faintly visible, bloodying the sky over the horizon. Suddenly the boy grabbed Quamodian's arm.
"There, preacher! See it? That's where the sunbolts struck."
"I see," Andy Quam ground out. "Flyer, can't we go any faster?"
Resentfully the voice clicked itself on. "No," it said, and clicked off again.
"Now, stop that!" shouted Quamodian. "Why not?"
The flyer relented. "The robot inspector has issued orders for us to follow it," it pointed out. "If I go any faster, it will be following us." Its voice mellowed as it settled down for a nice chat. "You see, Mr. Quamodian," it said, "it is still Starday, and the Robot Inspector does not wish to offend the peace of Starday with a sonic boom. This planet has a rather dense atmosphere, composed principally of oxygen (twenty per cent), nitrogen (eighty per cent), water vapor, carbon dioxide. . ."
"Skip that part! I know Earth's atmosphere!"
"Of course. The point is, Mr. Quamodian, that at these parameters of altitude, temperature and barometric pressure, the sonic barrier occurs at just a bit over our present speed. So you see, no, Mr. Quamodian, we cannot go any faster—and in any event," it added chattily, "we are there."
The flyer deposited them on the side of the mountain; the robot inspector would not allow it any closer to the cave mouth. Andy Quam and the boy piled out, stared upward at the wreck. "Stars, preacher! They really got it!" whispered the boy. "I—I'm afraid Miss Zaldivar was hit."
"We have no such information," sang the robot, humming overhead. "Please wait. I am scanning the area."
But Andy Quam was past the point of caring what the robot inspector wanted. He thrust the boy aside and scrambled up the side of the hill, over uneven ground. He dodged around the wreck of a vehicle-then realized it must be Molly Zaldivar's and stopped, his heart in his mouth, until a frantic search convinced him she was not in it, nor anywhere around. Then up that hill again, his legs pumping, his heart pounding, his breath rasping.
Although in truth, reason was saying in his ear, it was past the time for haste. Whatever destruction had been accomplished here, and it was vast, was long over. Coarse brown smoke oozed from the cave mouth above, and there was a stink of charred plastic and smoldering trash of a thousand kinds. But the fire had burned itself out. No one was in sight.