In less than two minutes the walking wall was a mass of staggering leviathans, half of them out of commission, the rest stumbling ponderously over their fallen comrades trying to reform a line already too short to work.
So much for that try, Conway thought. Then the super-sonics were their last hope. There wouldn’t be time for more. Maybe there wasn’t even time for that.
“Where’s the supersonic squad?” he asked, impressed at the false briskness of his own voice. The communications officer looked up at the luminous chart.
“Almost there, General. Half a minute away.”
Conway glanced once at the television screen, which now showed Ego standing over the prostrate metal giants and swaying rather oddly as he looked down. It wasn’t like his behavior pattern to hesitate like this. There seemed to be something on his mind. Whatever it was, it might mean a few moments’ leeway.
“I’m going out there myself, sergeant,” Conway said. “I—I want to be on the spot when—” He paused, realizing that he was saying aloud what was really a private soliloquy, Conway to Conway, with no eavesdroppers. What he meant was that he wanted to be there when the end came— one way or the other. He had envied the robot, he had hoped infinite things for it. He had begun to identify with the powerful and tireless steel. Win or lose, he wanted to be on the spot at the payoff.
Running down the corridor was like running in a dream, floating, almost, his legs numb and the sound of his footfalls echoing from feathery distances. Each time his weight jolted down he wondered if that knee could take it, whether it wouldn’t fold and let him fall, let him lie there and rest… But no, he wanted to stand beside Ego and see the steel face and hear the mindless voice when they destroyed the robot, or the robot destroyed them all. The third chance—success—seemed too remote to consider.
When he got there he hardly knew it. He was dimly aware that he had stopped running, so there must be a reason. He was standing with his hand on a doorknob, his back leaning against the panels, gasping for breath. To the left stretched the narrow corridor down which he had run. Before him the broad hall loomed where men had fought Ego and failed, and machines had fought him and now lay almost still, or staggered futilely, out of control.
No matter how clearly you see a scene on television screens, you never really experience it until you get there. Conway had forgotten, in this brief while, how tall Ego really was. There was a smell of machine oil and hot metal in the air, and dust motes danced in the cone of Ego’s searchlight as he stooped over the fallen robots. He was about to do something. Conway couldn’t guess what.
Running footsteps and the clank of equipment sounded down the corridor to the left. Conway turned his head a little and saw the supersonic squad pounding toward him. He thought, maybe there’s still a chance. If Ego delays another two minutes…
On the floor the fallen robots still twitched and stirred in response to the distant commands of their operators. But a heavy-duty robot, fallen, isn’t easy to set upright again. Ego stooped over the nearest, seeming almost puzzled.
Then with sudden, rather horrifying violence, he reached out and ripped the front plate off his victim with one rending motion. His gaze plunged shining into the entrails of the thing, glancing in bright reflections off the tubes and the wiring so coarse in comparison with his own transistors and printed circuits. He put out one steel hand, sank his fingers deep and ripped again, gazing, engrossed, at the havoc he made. There was something frightful about this act of murder, one robot deliberately disemboweling another on his own initiative, with what seemed the coolest scientific interest.
But whatever Ego sought wasn’t there. He straightened and went on to the next, ripped, stooped, studied the ticking and flashing entrails intently, his own inward ticking quite loud as if he were muttering to himself.
Conway, beckoning the supersonic squad on, thought to himself, “In the old days they used to tell fortunes that way. Maybe he’s doing it now…” And once more the chilly thought swam up to the surface of his consciousness that perhaps he knew what drove the robot to desperation. Perhaps he too knew the future, and the knowledge and the pressure made the two of them kin. Win the war was what Ego’s ticking entrails commanded, just as the more complex neurons of Conway’s brain commanded him. But what if winning was impossible, and Ego knew…
The supersonic squad, running hard, burst out of the side corridor and pulled up short at their first sight of Ego in the—no, not flesh. In the shining steel, giant-tall, with the cyclops eye glaring. The sergeant panted something at Conway, trying to salute, forgetting that both his hands were full of equipment.
Conway with his pointing finger drew a semicircle in front, of him before the calculator room door.
“Set the guns up, quick—along here. We’ve got to stop him if he tries to get in.”
Ego straightened from his second victim and moved on to a third, hesitating over it, looking down.
The squad had, after all, only about thirty seconds to spare. They had been assembling their equipment as they ran, and now with speed as precise as machinery they took up positions along the line Conway had assigned them. He stood against the door, looking down at their stooping backs as they drew up the last line of defense with their own bodies and their guns between Ego and the calculators. Or no, Conway thought, maybe I’m the last line. For some remote and despairing thought was shaping itself in his mind as he looked at Ego…
In exactly the same second that the first ultrasonic gun swung its snout toward the corridor, Ego straightened and faced the double doors and the circle of men kneeling behind their guns. It seemed to Conwaythat over their heads he and Ego looked at each other challengingly for a moment.
“Sergeant,” Conway said in a tense voice. “Cut him off at the leg, halfway to the knee. And pinpoint it fine. He’s full of precision stuff and he’s worth a lot more than you or me.’
Ego bathed them in his cold headlight beam. Conway, wondering if the robot had understood, said quickly, “Fire.”
You could hear the faintest possible hissing, nothing more. But a spot of heat glowed cherry-red and then blinding white upon Ego’s left leg just below the knee.
Conway thought, “It’s hopeless. If he charges us now he’ll break through before we can—”
But Ego had another defense. The searchlight glance blinked once, and then Conway felt a sudden, violent discomfort he couldn’t place, and the heat-spot went red again and faded. The sergeant dropped the gun nozzle and swore, shaking his hand.
“Fire on six,” he said. “Eight, stand by.”
Ego stood motionless, and the discomfort Conway felt deepened in rhythm with a subtle, visible vibration that pulsed through the steel tower before him.
A second sonic gun hissed faintly. A spot of red sprang out on the robot’s leg. The vibration deepened, the discomfort grew worse. The heat-spot faded to nothing.
“Interference, sir,” the sergeant said. “He’s blanketing the sound-wave with a frequency of his own—something he’s giving out himself. Feel it?”
“But why doesn’t he charge?” Conway asked himself, not aloud, for fear the robot could really understand. And he thought, maybe he can’t charge and broadcast the protecting frequency at the same time. Or maybe he hasn’t thought yet that he could wade right through before we could hurt him much. And Conway tried to picture to himself the world as it must look to Ego, less than an hour old, with impossible conflicts raging in the electronic complexities of his chest.