“I love you, too,” Pias smiled back. “That’s what keeps me going.” And as her face
disappeared off the screen, he closed his eyes to hold the afterimage for as long as he
could.
Fortier, a robot! They had known that the fourth of the creatures had been built like a
male DesPlainian-but Fortier wasn’t quite a DesPlainian, and he’d come so highly
recommended that they overlooked that fact. For this robot to have taken the real
Fortier’s place, it would have to know the inner workings of Naval Intelligence, including
all the codes-and the implications of that were frightening.
Pias forced his mind to put aside such thoughts and concentrate on only one thing: how
to destroy this robot. Both of them had come aboard with blasters they had taken from
Pias’s pirate captors, but they had stored them out of the way on a lower deck. Neither
had thought he would need them inside the ship; Pias had not expected betrayal from his
ally, and the robot had probably planned to kill the SOTS agent with a surprise snap of
the neck. The situation had changed, and Pias knew he’d have to find some way of going
below and arming himself. The robot could not be overcome simply by brute force.
“I don’t know about you,” he said aloud, “but waiting makes me hungry. I think I’ll go aft
and fix myself a snack. Can I get you anything while I’m back there?”, “No, I couldn’t cat
right now. Too nervous.”
“Suit yourself.” Pias left his seat in the control cabin and climbed down the ladder into the
small galley/storeroom below it. He started clattering noisily around to convince his
companion he was indeed working in here, meanwhile trying to remember where they
had stored the blasters. He recalled, to his chagrin, that they were one more level down,
in the small ship’s engine room. He couldn’t think of any reasonable excuse for going
down there.
“What was that?” Pias asked suddenly. “What was what’?”
“I thought I heard a noise down in the drive room. I’d better go have a look.” And without
waiting for an answer Pias practically dove down the ladder as fast as he could. At this
point he didn’t care whether the robot’s suspicions were aroused or not; he wanted to
get to a blaster as quickly as possible, while he still had a slight head start on his enemy.
At this point the robot peered down from the control room and saw that Pias was moving
far faster than he should have been for performing this kind of check. Whether the robot
knew now that Pias was aware of its identity, it did know that this behavior was
suspicious. Pias was not so essential to the robot’s plans that suspicious behavior could
be at all tolerated. The killer machine thus came to the conclusion, in a fraction of a
second, that Pias was now to be dispensed with immediately.
Having decided, it acted. Despite Pias’s head start, the robot was so agile that it was
down the ladder into the galley before Pias had even made it completely into the drive
room. The SOTE agent could hear his enemy’s approach and knew every second
counted. He leaped directly from the ladder to the cabinet in which the blasters had been
stored.
Grabbing both weapons at once, he turned around, fumbling the guns into firing position.
Even as he did so the robot reached out one hand and grabbed the pair of barrels,
crushing the weapons in its powerful grip. The move was a dramatic one, possibly
intended to impress Pias and demoralize him. But the Newforester didn’t have time to be
impressed; he was too busy struggling for his life.
The instant the robot grabbed the guns and destroyed them, Pias ducked under_ the
other’s outstretched arm and came up behind it. The man from SOTE knew he was stuck
in this chamber; if he tried climbing the ladder again, the robot could grab his leg and the
fight would soon be over. Similarly, he could not hope to beat the creature in simple
hand-to-hand combat-it was too quick and too strong, even for a person from a high-grav
world. He had to have some kind of a weapon and, even more important, a stratagem.
There was a long steel wrench sitting on a shelf against the far wall. Pias swiped at it,
grabbed it, and danced out of the robot’s reach as it came at him again. Pias was not
sure how well-constructed the robot was, but he was willing to bet a wrench would do
some damage if he could manage to land a solid blow. If…
There was very little room to maneuver in the cramped drive room, a fact that worked to
the robot’s advantage. Two of the side walls were banks of dials and switches, manual
overrides for the control systems normally nun from the pilot’s console. The floor was
thickly plated and corrugated, shielding the room’s occupants from the deadly energies of
the atomic drive beneath them. The other two walls were for shelves and cabinets,
holding miscellaneous tools and items the occupants of the ship wished to store. And in
the center of the room, dominating everything, were the large black drive housings-floor
to ceiling in height and so thick that a man embracing one could not fit his arms even
halfway around. These immense machines operated with little more than a gargling
sound, but with his senses heightened for this battle they sounded to Pias like twin
waterfalls pounding at his brain.
The robot came at him with impersonal determination, and Pias had to keep backing
away, circling around the room in and out of tight corners, trying to maneuver for better
position. But there was no better position, not in these narrow spaces. Even under
peaceful conditions, ship’s engineers had difficulty maneuvering themselves through the
cramped confines of the drive room to check on or repair any component of the ship.
Pias looked for a good place to stand and found none. He dared not even swing his
wrench until he could be assured of a solid blow; with the robot’s amazing reflexes it
could easily wrest the weapon away from him given any chance at all.
This should be Jules’s fight, one small detached part of him thought. He’s the physical
one. I’m the one who likes to think his way out of things.
The robot kept coming, quick as lightning, relentless as the sea.
In backing up, Pias bumped his left elbow hard against the protruding knob of a small
hatch labeled “Contaminant Flush.” Luckily the wrench was in his other hand, or he would
have dropped it as he yowled with pain. The robot only smiled and kept advancing-but in
the middle of the pain, the flash of an idea occurred to Pias.
It would be too late to try it right now; the positions were wrong. He backed up again,
continuing around another circuit of the room, trying to maneuver his opponent into
exactly the configuration he wanted. He only prayed he would have enough strength in his
right arm to make it work.
As they reached the Contaminant Flush hatch again, Pias planted his feet firmly and
refused to back away any farther. The robot smiled, seeing this as a positive sign that
the fight would soon be over, and rushed forward even faster. Its eyes watched the
wrench in Pias’s right hand, confident that was the only danger it faced.
As the machine came toward him, Pias reached out with his left hand and pulled open the
hatch cover for the Contaminant Flush chute. The robot, seeing this sudden move, tried
to slow down to avoid running into the open cover that was now between itself and its
target-and in that instant, Pias swung his wrench downward at the robot’s head with all
the strength his body possessed.
The robot reached up quickly, grabbing the handle of the wrench before it could reach its
head and gripping it tightly to yank it out of Pias’s grasp. Pias continued his downward
momentum so hard that his feet actually left the ground. So strong was the
follow-through that it pulled the robot off its feet and banged it against the side of the
open hatch. Before it could recover, Pias pushed it toward the opening and shoved it into
the chute, swinging the hatch shut behind it and locking it with a decided clang that rang
through the room.
The chute was meant as an emergency disposal tube for anything within the spaceship
that became contaminated by radiation from the drive. Before the robot could react and
fight its way out, Pias pressed the button at the side of the hatch. With a silent whoosh of
air, the robot was ejected from the tube and out of the ship into the dark depths of space
beyond the hull.
Pias leaned against the wall and found himself collapsing into a sitting position on the