“Buster,” I said, “I don’t buy a word of what you say. Why should the landing of a ship set off vibrations of that kind?”
He laid a crooked finger alongside his bulbous nose. “The world is closed,” he said. “None is welcome here. When visitors do come the world makes certain that they die before they can leave the city. And if they should so manage to escape, the planet seals the ship so they can’t take off again and spread the word of what they found.”
“And yet,” I said, “there is a strong directional beam, a homing beam, reaching well out into space. A beam to lure them in. You lured us in and you got rid of us in the desert world and you had everything we had taken from the ship. You had everything but the ship and maybe you are working on how to get the ship-our ship and all the others that are standing out there, sealed. No wonder the hobbies insisted on bringing all our luggage in. They knew what would happen to the ship. Apparently you haven’t figured out how to beat this sealing business yet.”
He shook his head. “It’s a part of the closed planet routine, sir. There must be a way to get around it, but it’s not been ciphered yet.”
Now that he knew I had him pegged, he’d not bother to deny it. He’d admit everything or almost everything and hope to gain some credit for being frank and forthright. Why was it, I wondered, that so many primates, no matter where you found them, turned out to be such stinkers?
“Another thing that I can’t cipher,” said the gnome, “is how you all got back here. Never before has there been anyone who could come back from one of the other worlds. Not till we let them out.”
“And you claim you were going to let us out?”
“Yes, I swear we were. And you can have all your things. We had no intention of keeping any of them.”
“Now, that is fine,” I said. “You’re becoming reasonable. But there are other things we want.”
He bristled a little. “Like what?” he asked.
“Information,” I told him. “About another man. A humanoid very much like us. He would have had a robot with him.”
He glanced around, trying to make up his mind. I twitched the muzzle of the gun and helped him make it up.
“Long ago,” he said. “Very long ago.”
“He was the only one to come? The only one of us?”
“No. Even longer than him there were others of you. Six or seven of them. They went out beyond the city and that was the last I saw of them.”
“You didn’t put them into another world?”
“Why, yes, of course,” he said. “All who come we put there. It is necessary. Each arrival triggers another killing wave. Once that killing wave is done, we are safe until another ship arrives. We put all who arrive into another world, but we always bring them out.”
Perhaps, I admitted to myself, he was telling us the truth. Although maybe not all the truth. Perhaps he had another angle that he hadn’t sprung on us. Although now, I was fairly certain, even if be had another one he might hesitate to spring it. We had him dead to rights.
“But there is always another killing wave,” I reminded him, “when another ship arrives.”
“But only in the city,” he told me. “Out of the city and you are safe from it.”
“And no one, once they arrive, stays in the city?”
“No. They always leave the city. To hunt for something they think they’ll find outside the city. All of them always bunt for something.”
God, yes, I thought, all of them are on the trail of something. How many other intelligences, in how many different forms, had heard that voice Smith had heard and had been lured to follow it?
“Do they ever tell you,” Sara asked, “what it is they hunt for?”
He grinned crookedly. “They are secretive,” he said.
“But this other humanoid,” Sara reminded him. “The one who came alone, accompanied by the robot…”
“Robot? You mean the metal humanoid very like himself?”
“Don’t play dumb,” I snapped. “You know what a robot is. Those hobbies there are robots.”
“We not be robots,” Dobbin said. “We be honest hobbies.”
“You shut up,” I said.
“Yes,” said the gnome. “The one with the robot. He also went away and did not come back. But in time the robot did. Although he would tell me nothing. He had not a word to say.”
“And the robot still is here?” asked Sara.
The gnome said, “A part of him I have. The part that makes him function, I regret very much, is gone. The brain I suppose you call it. The brain of him is gone. I sold it to the wild hobbies that dwell in the wilderness. Very much they wanted it, very much they paid. Still I could not refuse them. It was worth my life to do it.”
“Those wild hobbies?” I asked. “Where do we go to find them?”
He made a shrugging motion. “No telling that,” he said. “They wander wide and far. Most often they are found north of here. Very wild indeed.”
“What did the wild hobbies want of Roscoe’s brain?” asked Sara. “What possible use could it be to them?”
He spread his hands. “How could I know?” he asked. “They are beings one does not question closely. Very rough and wild. They have a hobby’s body, but heads they have like you, and arms, and they yell most loudly and are unreasonable.”
“Centaurs,” said Tuck. “There are many of them, I understand, spread throughout the galaxy. Almost as common as the humanoids. And they are, I understand, as the gentleman here says, most unreasonable. Although I have never met one.”
“You sold them only the braincase,” I said. “You still have the robot’s body here.”
“They did not want the body. I still have it here.”
I dropped the space lingo and switched to English, speaking to Sara. “What do you think?” I asked. “Do we try to track down Knight?”
“He would be the one…”
“If he is still alive, he’d be an old, old man by now. I think the chances are he is not alive. The robot came back. He’d not have left Knight if he were still alive.”
“We might find out where he was heading,” Sara said. “If we could get the braincase and put it back in Roscoe’s body, he might have some idea of what Knight was looking for and where it might be found.”
“But he wasn’t talking. He wouldn’t tell the gnome.”
“He might talk to us,” said Sara. “After all, we’re his people. It was people like us who made him and if he had any loyalty, which I suspect he had, that loyalty also was to a human being.”
I turned back to the gnome. “All right,” I said, “we’ll need the robot’s body and maps of the planet. A supply of water. The hobbies to carry us and our packs and…”
He threw up his hands in horror, backing away from me, shaking his head stubbornly from side to side. “The hobbies you can’t have, he said “I have need of them myself”
“You didn’t let me finish.,” I said. “We are taking you along.”
“That you cannot do,” shrilled Dobbin. “He must stay to warn the creatures on incoming ships and get them under cover against the killing wave. Sire, you must understand…”
“We’ll take care of all of that,” I said. “We’ll shut off the beam. If there is no beam to lure them, no one will ever come.”
“But you can’t shut it off,” wailed the gnome. “No one can do that, for the location of the transmitter is something that we do not know. I have never found it. I have hunted and the others before me hunted and it has not been found.”
He stood before us, dejected. Somehow or other the props had been knocked out from under him.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.
“It makes sense,” said Sara. “It had me puzzled all the time. Whoever built this city installed the beam and our scrawny friend is not the kind of people who could have built this city. He is simply living here-a savage living in a deserted city, picking up whatever scraps he can.”
I should have thought of it myself, I knew. But I had been so burned up at being tossed into the desert world, and burned up, too, when I found the gnome going through our things that I’d been out for blood. If that little twerp had made one wrong step, I would have mowed him down.
“Tell us,” Sara said to him, “exactly what you are. It wasn’t your people who built this city, was it?”