When the last ships of the Terranians perished in a burning atomic cloud or fled in panic into the universe, only one burning planet, the third one, revolved about the sun. The rest of the Silver Arrow fleet gathered. The moon was destroyed, Mars and Venus reduced to ashes. They flew toward the next sun system.
From the central planet, the second fleet started out.
The third was being built.
As the fourth was ready for flight, there were scarcely any humanoids left.
The gods had died and there were only robots left.
Robots that reproduced themselves constantly, ever faster, ever more developed, ever more power hungry.
And when nothing was left to conquer, they dared to take the leap over the great abyss and forge on to the neighbouring galaxy. No one knew what they would find there but perhaps there their advance would be stopped.
But mankind could no longer profit by that chance…
The weird vision had lasted only a minute but for Homunk these 60 seconds seemed like an eternity. He awoke as if from a dream and looked at the worker robots.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“Do you have to know the reasons?”
“They interest me. I am myself an android and think more logically than a human being. You are a robot and think equally logically. True, I must admit that I’ve never met more intuitively behaving robots; even so, logic retains its upper hand. You would tell me the intentions of the Metalix only when it would be to your advantage. This advantage interests me.”
“Your arrival has changed the situation in our world. The surface robots have united. Until now, the religious war took its toll. We have always had to work but now we’ve threatened to stop. We have no weapons to defend ourselves. Thus it will be our fate to be melted down and re-built or simply be re-programmed. As we are now, we will not continue to exist. In other words: the future of our world and our race does not concern us any more. We have become the sacrifice to unity. But you’ve already said that we feel and we think. That’s why I’ve told you the truth. We want our revenge before we’re destroyed.”
Pucky toyed with his black box. “Should I press the white button or not—for you, you say, it wouldn’t make any difference any more?”
“Right,” said the robot and looked at the mousebeaver carefully. “So you can set off the bomb. You would save the universe from destruction by doing it.” He turned toward Homunk again. “Leave our world now. We are grateful that you came.”
Without waiting for an answer, the work robot turned around, joined the other eleven and marched at their head out of the empty dome hall.
Above on the platform of the robot brain, Ooch clambered out of the cabin of the glider. He assumed a stance and squeaked: “Well, Homunk, what do you say now? We only have to appear and the Metalix evaporate. Without our intervention, Koster and his men would have come to a bad end indeed.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Homunk admitted. Still, he hesitated. The quick conclusion seemed a bit too abrupt for him. He could not imagine that the robots would give up so easily. Besides, they had not demanded the removal of the dangerous bomb. “Climb back in, Ooch. We’re flying back to the EX-238.”
Before he and Pucky could climb up to the glider, the robot screens lit up. This time the loudspeakers were not on.
The robot brain itself took up communication with Homunk.
While he was reading the symbols, he was translating aloud, so that Pucky could understand the message: “We’re giving you 10 minutes of your time to leave our world. Hurry, before it is too late. End of transmission.”
Homunk looked at Pucky. The mousebeaver held up his black box.
“Ask the thing what’s up.”
“What for? We’ll return to the ship, then we’ll see. I don’t know if you’re thinking what I am. Only I wouldn’t want to make the final decision, because I don’t know if I could justify it. You know what I mean…?”
“The bomb, of course. Don’t worry, that decision is not up to us but up to the robots themselves.”
“How do you mean?”
“Wait,” Pucky said mysteriously and took Homunk’s arm. “Let’s teleport.”
When they were sitting in the glider, it lifted immediately under the practiced hands of the pilot Ooch. They headed toward the spaceport. There the spherical spaceship EX-238 towered over all the Silver Arrows that stood around it by the hundreds. There were hardly any robots to be seen. In the east, the army of the believers, who no longer believed, was moving out of the city.
The protective shield of the EX-238 was withdrawn as the hangar lock opened. Five minutes later, Homunk and Pucky were in central control. Lt. Schlenkowa had relinquished command to Maj. Koster again.
“At last!” Koster did not hide his relief. “I was afraid they’d hold you back.”
“I’d like to know how,” Pucky growled, and devoted himself wholly to greeting Iltu, who returned his greeting affectionately.
“Pucky put pressure on them,” Homunk explained and reported to the Major what had happened. Koster’s face was thoughtful long after the android had finished his report.
“I don’t quite understand,” he said slowly and turned on the intercom. On the screen appeared the face of the officer responsible for the weapons room. “Repeat again, Lt. Werner, what you gave to Lt. Puck today.”
The lieutenant excused himself, disappeared for a few seconds and then reappeared with a piece of paper in his hand.
“An Arkon bomb, sir. And a remote detonator and a dummy bomb. Besides which, a radio amplifier. That’s all, sir.”
The screen darkened.
Maj. Koster and Homunk looked at Pucky.
Pucky was crouched next to Iltu on the couch. They were holding hands and looking as innocent as lambs.
“Well?” said Homunk. “I find you’re irresponsible, after all. Had you noticed, Pucky, that you’re sitting right on top of the box? Your weight isn’t much but it’s enough to depress the white button.”
Pucky grinned, pulled the box from under his haunch and handed it to Homunk.
“You can take it back to Lt. Werner. We don’t need it any more.”
“The amplifier, right” What good is it?”
“It looks beautifully dangerous,” Pucky confessed. “And you must admit that it served its purpose, right? Of course you can press the button for hours and nothing will happen. There isn’t even a battery inside.
Homunk took the box, looked at it, shook his head and laid the amplifier on the control desk in front of Koster. Then he turned back to Pucky.
“Now you’d better explain…”
“Just a moment!” Koster interrupted him excitedly and pointed to the outside screen. “There’s someone in a tank. What’s that structure on top?”
“A screen,” whispered Homunk. “Ha! A message in symbols. I’ll read…”
“…before we destroy you, you should know that your plan has failed. We’ve found the bomb. It is now on a remote-controlled spaceship and has nearly passed out of our sun system. Out in the universe, it can detonate all it wants. It will do no damage…”
“…that was the message. Now the armoured ship is drawing away again. Be careful, Koster, do you have all the protective shields working? Take off. The robots are going to attack.”
Koster gave the necessary orders.
Even while the protective shields activated, a few dozen Silver Arrows took off from the landing fields. A hundred meters from the EX-238, the around parted. Energy cannons appeared and opened fire immediately.
The glaring flame beams glided ineffectively off the protective shield of the EX-238.
The spherical spaceship started up.
On the vidscreen, the city sank away below. The Silver Arrows slipped in from the screen’s edges and attacked concentrically. They had astonishingly powerful cannons but they could not penetrate the three layers of the protective shield. Perhaps if they concentrated on one particular point of it and held it under constant fire…
Koster stepped up speed.
The central planet of the Milky Way grew ever smaller. At last the first stars appeared, so close together that there seemed no way through them. But the first ones were still two light-years away.
Since the attack of the Silver Arrows did not let up, Koster ordered the use of the transform cannons.
Homunk had gone up to Pucky. He sat next to him and Iltu. “You bluffed the robots?” he asked.
Pucky shook his head. “It only looks that way. I swindled them with the box, that’s true. But not with the bomb. What they found and loaded into their rocket was the dummy. The real bomb lies 50 meters under it in a dried-up swimming pool of the old Galacteers.”
Homunk looked at Pucky searchingly.
“And where is the remote-control button?”
“In the dummy.”