“Turn around,” said Roberts.
The guide looked blank, and ignored the demand.
Roberts shifted the gun slightly.
“Turn around.”
The muscular figure turned around.
Roberts said, “Lie flat on your face, hands at your sides. Now, keep your arms straight, but work your hands and arms under your body, so your right thigh pins your right hand, and your left thigh pins your left hand. All right, work the whole length of your arms under. Stay that way.”
The guide lay flat on his face in the stony dirt.
Roberts walked over.
“Bend your legs slowly at the knee. Raise your feet.”
Roberts piled stones on the guide’s shoulders, and on the flat soles and heels of the guide’s boots.
“Now, don’t move, or the stones will fall off, and the clatter will warn me.”
* * *
Roberts walked back near the water’s edge, and looked out over the pool. He had one obstacle temporarily out of the way, but he was still a long distance from that ledge. He carefully felt along the invisible barrier, and, so far as he could judge, it was exactly as described. It felt somewhat like the edge of a kind of large transparent balloon, yielding as he pressed against it, but growing progressively harder to force back as he displaced it. When he stopped pushing, it forced him back.
As he moved around, he glanced repeatedly at the guide, who was cooperating, so far.
There seemed to be no way around the barrier, and very possibly no way to shorten the distance across that stretch of seething water. What the bottom was like was anyone’s guess, but it could be uneven blocks of rock, covered with slime, and littered with the skeletons of past victims. From what Roberts had seen, ten seconds in that water would guarantee that he wouldn’t climb that rock face.
A dull glint from the direction of the rock face briefly caught his attention, but, when he looked, he saw nothing different, and merely retained the impression of a falling rock. He glanced around.
There had to be some way to either get over the pool without going in it, or to deceive or eliminate the fish.
Roberts glanced at his prisoner, then looked at the forest cut off from him by the unseen barrier. Experimentally, he fired his fusion gun. Swinging the beam to be sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing, he found that the barrier stopped the beam each time. It didn’t reflect it. It seemed to absorb it. That meant that he couldn’t hope to fell across the pool any of the tall trees beyond the barrier. And where the fusion beam could reach, there were no trees close enough to the pool to do any good.
* * *
Roberts watched the fish leaping from the water, raised the gun, waited, then aimed at a gleaming gray form, and squeezed the trigger.
A large sharp-jawed fish dropped back, eyes bulging, hit awkwardly on its side, and flopped around on the surface.
All across the pool, the leaping and splashing stopped. The surface of the water roiled in a hundred swift brief currents. The injured fish was jerked, wrenched, and ripped to bits, sharp snouts and sleek flanks showing for just an instant around it.
Roberts aimed carefully, and fired a second time.
A second fish twisted up nearly out of the water, and fell back with a flat splash.
The others at once tore it to shreds.
Roberts fired a third time, at an exposed flank.
A third fish flopped on the surface.
The water around the injured fish was alive with snapping, tearing, steel-gray forms.
Back of Roberts, there was the clatter of a fallen rock.
In rapid succession, Roberts fired at several more fish, then glanced back.
The guide had dumped the stones from one foot, and was carefully lowering the other.
Again, out of the corner of his eye, Roberts sensed motion at the rock face. But there was no time to look in that direction.
He fired carefully, just over the guide’s head.
The guide froze.
Roberts turned back, and glanced briefly at the rock face. All that moved there was falling water.
He looked back at the pool, and fired at another fish, and then another.
He kept firing methodically, until suddenly there were no more targets.
A few bits and fragments floated on the surface, but nothing attacked them. The flying insects ranged over the pool unmolested.
Now, supposedly the remaining fish were glutted. If so, it should be safe to go across the pool.
Roberts glanced at the rock face to his left, estimated the distance, and blinked.
Down this face of rock, along with the trickle of water, flopped a sleek steel-gray form, bounding and turning, to hit the rock shelf below, where the water flowed out toward the pool, with a loud splat.
Roberts abruptly realized what this would do to his plans, and raised the gun.
Behind him, there was a crash of pebbles, and a sudden scramble.
The guide was on his feet, hurtling straight for him.
* * *
Roberts sprang aside.
The guide changed direction and slid, then Roberts was back out of the way, and put the thin, dazzling beam of the fusion gun in front of the guide’s eyes.
The guide stopped.
Now, Roberts thought, he had survived that.
But, at the same time, that one fish that had come down the rock face had flopped into the pool. And that fish wasn’t glutted.
Roberts glanced out at the water, and the bits and fragments were no longer floating on the surface. But that little appetizer wouldn’t be enough. The fish would still be hungry.
There was a splash, and out of the corner of his eye, Roberts could see the sleek gray form fall back and vanish, after snapping up one of the flying insects.
The guide said, “Drop the gun,” and began to slowly walk toward Roberts. “Drop it!”
Roberts put the beam of the fusion gun over the guide’s left shoulder. Then he put it past the guide’s head, over the right shoulder.
The guide grinned, and his eyes glowed.
He kept coming.
From the direction of the rock face, something flashed briefly, falling down the stream that flowed over the rock, to hit with a splat.
The guide charged.
Roberts sprang aside, kicked him under the chin, whirled like a ballet dancer, and hammered him across the back of the neck as he passed.
The guide grabbed unsuccessfully at Roberts’ leg, then went down on his hands and knees.
Roberts said coldly, “It’s a mistake to try unarmed combat on a man armed with a knife and a gun.” But he was noting that blows that would have killed an ordinary person were about as effective with this opponent as taps with a length of rolled-up paper.
The guide stumbled to his feet, turned and faced Roberts. “You won’t fire the gun or use the knife. Not to kill me. Because you’re yellow.” He straightened, and his face showed pitying sympathy. “Sorry, lad, but you’re yellow.”
The guide began walking calmly toward Roberts, his face sure and confident. “Drop the gun. You won’t use it. Drop it.”
Roberts aimed at the guide’s head.
The guide kept coming, his face reflecting quiet confidence.
Robert squeezed the trigger.
The fusion beam hit the guide’s left eye. There was a dazzling white glow, the flesh peeled back like paper in a fire, and there was a splintering crack! Bits and fragments of glass or plastic, glowing redly, flew out in a shower.
“Halt!” said Roberts.
The guide halted.
Where the flesh had peeled back to expose the left eye socket, a silvery glitter showed instead of bone.
Roberts reminded himself, all this was taking place in a simulator. But the problem remained.
Roberts studied the motionless roboid “special guide” and said, “I didn’t realize the Patrol was so hard-pressed for manpower that it was recruiting humanoid robots.”
“No, sir.”
“How come that now I’m ‘sir’?”
“At this stage, sir, I am programmed to so address you.”
“You will obey my orders, now?”
“Yes, sir.
“At this stage?”
“Yes, sir.
“So that, if I order you to go over to the water and kneel down you will do it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if I command you to carry me piggyback across that pool, you will carry me piggyback across the pool.”
“I will obey you in this phase, and, at your order, will do anything I am capable of doing.”
That left unanswered the question whether the robot was capable of carrying him across. It also raised another point. Roberts cleared his throat.
“When does ‘this phase’ end?”
“When an internal mechanism gives the appropriate command signal, sir.”
“When will that happen?”
“I cannot predict, sir. It depends on circumstances.”
Roberts nodded. That fit in. The “command signal” would be given at that unpredictable moment when Roberts stuck his neck out far enough for the “guide” to heave him into the pool.