"Very practical people, we are," Annamarie remarked with irony. "We didn't think to bring lights."
"We never needed them anywhere else on the planet – we can't be blamed too much. Anyway, the code-panel gives us a little light."
By the steady, dim red glow cast by the code-panel, the three could see the anteroom fairly clearly. It was disappointing. For all they could tell, there was no difference between this and any other station on the whole planet. But why all the secrecy? The dead Martians surely had a reason for leaving the guard-robots so thick and furious. But what was it?
Stanton pressed an ear to the wall of the anteroom. "Listen!" he snapped. "Do you hear —?"
"Yes," said the girl at length. "Scuffling noises – a sort of gurgling too, like running water passing through pipes." "Look there!" wailed Josey.
"Where?" asked the archaeologist naturally. The dark was impenetrable. Or was it? There was a faint glimmer of light, not a reflection from the code-panel, that shone through a continuation of the fissure. It came, not from a single source of light, but from several, eight or ten at least. The lights were bobbing up and down. "I'd swear they were walking!" marvelled Ray.
"Ray," shrieked the girl faintly. As the lights grew nearer, she could see what they were – pulsing domes of a purplish glow that ebbed and flowed in tides of dull light. The light seemed to shine from behind a sort of membrane, and the outer surfaces of the membrane were marked off with faces –terrible, savage faces, with carnivorous teeth projecting from mouths that were like ragged slashes edged in writhing red.
"Ray!" Annamarie cried again. "Those lights – they're the luminous heads of living creatures!"
"God help us – you're right!" Stanton whispered. The patterns of what he had read in the bobbin-books began to form a whole in his mind. It all blended in – "Under-Eaters," "Fiends from Below," "Raging Glows." Those weirdly cryptic creatures that were now approaching. And – "Good Lord!" Stanton ejaculated, feeling squeamishly sick. "Look at them – they look like human beings!"
It was true. The resemblance was not great, but the oncoming creatures did have such typically Terrestrial features as hairless bodies, protruding noses, small ears, and so forth, and did not have the unmistakable hour-glass silhouette of the true Martians.
"Maybe that's why the Martians feared and distrusted the first Earthmen they saw. They thought we were related to these – things!" Stanton said thoughtfully.
"Mooning over it won't help us now," snapped Annamarie. "What do we do to get away from them? They make me nervous!"
"We don't do anything to get away. What could we do? There's no place to go. We'll have to fight – get out your guns!"
"Guns!" sneered Josey. "What guns? Mine's practically empty, and Annamarie threw hers away!"
Stanton didn't answer, but looked as though a cannon-shell had struck him amidships. Grimly he drew out his blaster. "Then this one will have to do all of us," was all he said. "If only these accursed blasters weren't so unmanageable – there's at least an even chance that a bad shot will bring the roof down on us. Oh, well –"I forgot to mention," he added casually, "that, according to the records, the reason that the true Martians didn't like these things was that they had the habit of eating their victims. Bearing that in mind, I trust you will not mind my chancing a sudden and unanimous burial for us all." Ht drew the blaster and carefully aimed it at the first of the oncoming group. He was already squeezing the trigger when Josey grabbed his arm. "Hold on, Ray!" Josey whispered. "Look what's coming."
The light-headed ones had stopped their inexorable trek toward the Terrestrials. They had bunched fearfully a few yards within the fissure, staring beyond the three humans, into the Mars-Tube.
Three of the spider-robots, the Tube-tenders, were there. Evidently the destruction of one of their number, and the consequent demolition of several of the hoops, had short-circuited this section of the track so that they could enter it and walk along without fear.
There was a deadly silence that lasted for a matter of seconds. The three from Earth cowered as silently as possible where they were, desirous of attracting absolutely no attention from either side. Then – Armageddon!
The three robots charged in, abruptly, lancing straight for the luminous-topped bipeds in the crevasse. Their metal legs stamped death at the relatively impotent organic creatures, trampling their bodies until they died. But the cave-dwellers had their methods of fighting, too; each of them carried some sort of instrument, hard and heavy-ended, with which they wreaked havoc on the more delicate parts of the robots.
More and more "Raging Glows" appeared from the crevasse, and it seemed that the three robots, heavily outnumbered, would go down to a hard-fought but inevitable "death" – if that word could be applied to a thing whose only life was electromagnetic. Already there were more than a score of the strange bipeds in the cavern, and destruction of the metal creatures seemed imminent.
"Why don't the idiotic things use their guns?" Annamarie shuddered.
"Same reason I didn't – the whole roof might come down. Don't worry – they're doing all right. Here come some more of them."
True enough. From the Mars-Tube emerged a running bunch of the robots – ten or more of them. The slaughter was horrible – a carnage made even more unpleasant by the fact that the dimness of the cavern concealed most of the details. The fight was in comparative silence, broken only by the faint metallic clattering of the workings of the robots, and an occasional thin squeal from a crushed biped. The cave-dwellers seemed to have no vocal organs.
The robots were doing well enough even without guns. Their method was simply to trample and bash the internal organs of their opponents until the opponent had died. Then they would kick the pulped corpse out of the way and proceed to the next.
The "Hot-Heads" had had enough. They broke and ran back down the tunnel from which they had come. The metal feet of the robots clattered on the rubble of the tunnel-floor as they pursued them at maximum speed. It took only seconds for the whole of the ghastly running fight to have traveled so far from the humans as to be out of sight and hearing. The only remnants to show it had ever existed were the mangled corpses of the cave-dwellers, and one or two wrecked robots.
Stanton peered after the battle to make sure it was gone. Then, mopping his brow, he slumped to a sitting position and emitted a vast "Whew!" of relief. "I have seldom been so sure I was about to become dead," he said pensively. "Divide and rule is what I always say – let your enemies fight it out among themselves. Well, what do we do now? My curiosity is sated –let's go back."
"That," said the girl sternly, "is the thing we are most certainly not going to do. If we've come this far we can go a little farther. Let's go on down this tunnel and see what's there. It seems to branch off farther down; we can take the other route .from that of the robots.
Josey sighed. "Oh, well," he murmured resignedly. "Always game, that's me. Let's travel."
"It's darker than I ever thought darkness could be, Ray," Annamarie said tautly. "And I just thought of something. How do we know which is the other route – the one the robots didn't take?"
"A typical question," snarled Stanton. "So you get a typical answer: I don't know. Or, to phrase it differently, we just have to put ourselves in the robots' place. If you were a robot, where would you go?"