Ego was a stalking giant in a dimly lit corridor on the screen. The volunteers had just burst out of a corridor door ten paces ahead of him, and he towered mightily over them. You could see their tiny, scared faces no bigger than peas turned up toward the oblivious, striding giant as he followed the searchlight splash of his single eye down the hall.
The two men must have moved at a dead run from here to there. They hadn’t had time to pick and choose, and their instructions had been ambiguous, but somewhere on the way they had snatched up a stout steel beam which now showed like a bright thread across the corridor. One man darted across the hall just ahead of the robot, and the two of them braced the beam shoulder high from opposite doorways, making a barrier across the path.
The robot didn’t even glance at the obstacle. He struck the beam squarely, the clang echoing through the corridor and reverberating from the screen into the communications room. Ego bounced a little, recovered his balance, measured the situation and then stooped to pass under the bar. Hastily the two men lowered their burden. Again a clang and a recoil, and this time the bar bent into a deep V at the point of impact. Over the screen they heard one of the men yell as the end of the bar caught him. Ego heaved upward with both hands, stepped under the bar and stalked off down the hall.
“Thirty seconds saved,” Conway said bitterly. “And one man down. Where are the HDs now?”
“About a minute and a half away, sir. Coming along corridor eight. They ought to intersect just outside the calculator room door. See, on the board?”
Slowly and heavily, it seemed to Conway, the purple dots moved against the darkness, ploddingly. A floating hand materialized and added two more red dots to the chain of Ego’s footsteps moving toward the heart of the citadel. The red dots were ahead. They were going to outstrip the purple.
“I’m going to fail,” Conway said to himself. He thought of all the human lives here underground, wholly dependent upon him, and all the lives outside, confident that the Pacific Front was in good hands. He wondered what the commanding general on the other side was doing now, and what he would do if he knew…
“Look, sir,” the communications officer said.
There was still one man of the volunteer team left on his feet. He hadn’t given up yet. Ego’s last heave had apparently snapped the steel bar off short at the V, leaving one end like a bent club. It must have been very heavy, but the man in the corridor was operating on a drive too intense to notice the weight. Club on shoulder, he was sprinting after Ego down the hall.
They saw him lessen the distance between them. They saw him at the robot’s heels. Distantly they heard him shout.
“Ego!” he called, as he had heard Broome call the name. And in answer, as the robot had answered before, Ego paused, turned, bathed the man in the cold one-eyed beam of its searchlight.
“Want—” the strangled; metallic voice said hollowly, and stopped.
The man with the club jumped high and smashed for the single bright eye in the robot’s forehead.
“Is it safe?” Conway asked. “Will he hurt him, Broome?” But he got no answer. Broome had disappeared.
On the screen the robot struck upward furiously with both hands, parrying the club just in time. The crash of impact made the screen shiver. The man had time and strength for one more swing, and this time at the height of its arc Ego seized the club and plucked it almost casually out of the man’s hands. Over his enormous steel shoulder he sent it clanging down the corridor behind him.
Conway glanced quickly at the chart. The purple dots were gaining. The red dot at the end of Ego’s chain wavered left and right as Ego dodged the two blows of the club. Conway looked back at the screen.
The disarmed man hesitated only briefly. Then he gathered himself and sprang straight up toward the blank steel face with its single eye. By some miracle he passed between the closing arms and locked his own arms around the steel neck. His body blinded the torch-lens of the robot’s eye, and he clung desperately, legs and arms clenched around the lurching steel tower of Ego’s body.
From the darkness beyond their struggling figures a heavy, rhythmic thudding began to be heard, making the television screen vibrate a little.
“The heavy-duties,” Conway breathed. He glanced again at the chart, not needing it to see the line of purple dots almost at the corridor intersection now, and the red dot of Ego wavering erratically.
The robot didn’t depend on vision alone. You could tell that by his motion. But the clinging man disturbed him. The heaving weight pulled him off balance. Ego plucked futilely at the man for an instant, staggering thirty degrees off course toward the left-hand wall. Then the steel hands got a grip on the clinging man, and the robot ripped him away easily and smoothly, with a gesture like tearing a shirt off his chest, and flung him with casual force against the wall.
Beyond Ego, at the far end of the corridor, you could see the tall double doors of the calculator room. Ego stood for a moment as if he were collecting himself. The screen seemed to be wavering, and Conway made a futile, steadying motion toward it. The vibration was so strong now that vision blurred upon it.
“What’s the matter?” Conway asked irritably. “Is it out of focus, or—”
“Look, sir,” the communications officer said. “Here they come.”
Like a walking wall the heavy robots wheeled out of the darkness at the edge of the screen, their ponderous tread making the whole scene shudder. Heavily they ground to a halt facing Ego, and stood there shoulder to shoulder across the corridor, their backs to the calculator doors.
Ego stood for a moment quite still, but shivering all over, his single eye sweeping from left to right and back again over them, infinitely fast. Something about these units of his own kind seemed to kindle a new and compelling drive, and Ego gathered himself together and lowered his shoulders and head a little, and surged forward as if eager for battle. The HDs, locked together in an unswerving row, braced themselves and stood firm.
The crash made every screen in the communications room flicker in distant sympathy. Sparks sprang out and steel plates groaned. Ego hung for an instant motionless upon the steel wall that opposed him, then fell back, staggered, braced himself to crash again.
But he did not charge. He stood there sweeping his bright scanner over the line, and the clicking in his chest rose and fell so loudly the listeners in the communications room could hear it plainly. A storm of alternate choices seemed to be pouring through the electronic mind of the thinker.
While Ego hesitated, the steel wall he confronted moved, curving outward at both ends toward the solitary figure. It was clear what the intention of the operators was. If these ponderous shapes could be made to close Ego in they could immobilize him by sheer massiveness, like tame elephants immobilizing a wild one.
But Ego saw the trap in the instant before the line began to move. His backward step and quick spin showed it. Conway thought his eye flashed brighter, and his whirl was incongruously light-footed. In contrast to the heavy-duty machines he looked like a steel dancer in his light, keen balance. He made a quick feint toward one end of the line, and the robots massed sluggishly together to receive him. They opened a gap in their line when they moved, and Ego darted for the gap. But instead of passing through it he put out both arms and pushed delicately and fiercely at the two sides of the opening, in exactly the right spots. The two robots leaned ponderously outward, tipped just barely off their balance. They leaned, leaned, inexorably leaned and fell. Each carried its next companion down with it. The corridor thundered with the crash.
Trampling on the fallen machines, the line closed up and moved ponderously forward. Ego ran at it with a clear illusion of joyous motion, stooped, struck two robots at once with the same delicate, exact precision, knowing before he struck at just what hidden fulcrum point their balance rested. The corridor thundered again with the tumult of their collapse. As the line tried to close once more over the fallen warriors Ego’s hands shot out and helped them heavily together, smashing two more into-one another with unexpected momentum. This time as he touched them his touches were sharp blows, and the steel plating buckled in like tin.