After a moment, he asked, “Where did those tractors come from?”
“They are part of our ship’s equipment. The machines were sent ahead to help in your capture.”
Jeslin grunted. “If one of the beams had touched us,” he said, “there’s a good chance we would have been torn apart before they made a capture! You’re right about your group not caring who stands in the way when they’re out to do something.” He saw Hulida’s cheeks go gray below the blindfold, added, “Just before they jumped us, you knew it was coming. You machmen have a built-in communication system of some kind—”
Hulida hesitated, said, “Yes, we do.”
“How does it operate?”
“I could attempt to describe it to you,” Hulida said, “but the description would have meaning only to another machman. The use of the system cannot be taught until it can be experienced.”
“At any rate,” Jeslin said, “your friends know we have stopped running and have settled down somewhere.”
Hulida shook his head.
“I have not told them that.” He managed a brief, shaky grin. “After all, Jeslin, I prefer to go on living . . . and there is no reason why either of us should die. You can do nothing more, and you’ve had a demonstration of what your life as a fugitive would be like. The group won’t give up the hunt until they have you. You can calculate your final odds for yourself. But surrender to me—now—and all will still be well.”
There had been a growing urgency in his voice. Jeslin watched him, not answering. The machman’s mouth worked. Fear, Jeslin thought. More fear than Hulida should be feeling at the moment. His own skin began to crawl. Here at the bottom of the ravine, the search screens showed him nothing.
He reached out quietly, switched on the Pointer’s stungun.
“Jeslin . . . ”
Jeslin remained silent.
“Jeslin, there is no time to lose!” Hulida’s voice was harsh with desperation. “I did not tell you the truth just now. I can conceal nothing from the group. There are multiple direct connections between the brains, the nervous systems, of all of us. Our communication is not wholly a mechanical process—we function almost as units of a group mind. They know you are hiding in the area and have been searching for you. At any instant—”
Jeslin turned the Pointer’s nose upward, triggered the gun. The stunfield smashed up out of the ravine, the machine following it. Man-shapes swirled about limply among the trees like drifting leaves, and something came thundering along the floor of the gully toward the place where the Pointer had been hiding.
Then the nightmare chase began again . . .
An endless period later, Jeslin realized he was clear of the pursuit for a second time. He kept the Pointer hurtling forward on a straight line, staying below the trees where he could, but flicking through open stretches and over streambeds without pausing. Once the screen showed him two figures wheeling high against the sky; he thought they were machmen but was under cover again before he could be sure.
Then something smashed against the Pointer’s engine section in the rear. Jeslin swung the machine about, saw a figure gliding away behind a massive tree trunk, sent it spinning with the stungun, turned again and rushed on. A minute later, there was a distant crashing in the forest; then silence.
The Pointer began to vibrate heavily, and presently the speed indicator dropped. Jeslin looked at the location chart, chewing his lip. His arm muscles ached; he was trembling with tension and fatigue. He found himself trying to urge the machine onward mentally, made a snorting sound of self-derision.
Then there was warm, golden sunlight ahead among the trees. Jeslin brought a folded black hood out from under the instrument panel, laid it beside him. He reached over and unfastened Hulida’s seat belt. The machman sagged sideways on the seat. His mouth moved as if he were speaking, but he seemed dazed.
Jeslin brought the Pointer to the ground, turned off the laboring engine. He picked up the black hood, dropped it over his head, its lower folds resting on his shoulders. From within, it seemed transparent, showing a glassy glitter around the edges of objects.
He took his gun from his pocket, hauled open the side door and stepped out. Ahead something slid quickly through a sunlit opening in the treetops. Jeslin sent two bolts ripping through the foliage behind it, reached back into the Pointer and hauled Hulida out by the arm. He swung the staggering machman around, started at a half-run toward the area of open ground fifty yards away, thrusting Hulida ahead of him.
“Jeslin—” It was a hoarse gasp.
“Keep moving! They’ll have a tractor on our machine in a moment.” He felt the figure lighten suddenly, warned, “Don’t try to leave me! I’ll blow your head off before you’re ten feet away.”
“You’re insane! You can’t escape now!”
Tractor beams roared suddenly among the trees behind them, and Hulida screamed. They stumbled through a thicket, out into the sunlight of a wide glade. Machman figures darted above the treetops of the far side, two hundred yards away. Jeslin ripped the blindfold from Hulida’s face, seized his arm again, ran forward with him into the glade.
From the center of the open area came a single deep bell note, a curiously attention-binding sound. Jeslin stopped, hurled Hulida forward, away from him. The machman rolled over, came swaying almost weightlessly to his feet. The bell note sounded again. Hulida’s head turned toward it. He went motionless.
Here it comes, Jeslin thought . . .
And it came. Under the shielding hood, he was experiencing it, as he had many times before, as a pulsing, dizzying, visual blur. Outside, wave after wave of radiation was rushing out from the animal trap concealed in the center of the clearing, a pounding, numbing pattern of confusion to any mind within its range, increasing moment by moment in intensity.
After ten seconds, it stopped.
Hulida slumped sideways, settled slowly to the ground.
A man-shape streaked down out of the sky, turning over and over, crashed into the treetops beyond the glade.
Something else passed through the thickets behind Jeslin, sucking noisily at the earth, and moved off into the distance, dirt and other debris cascading back down into the trees behind it. A similar din was receding through the forest to the south. The tractors were continuing on their course, uncontrolled.
Overhead, Jeslin saw other machman fliers drifting gradually down through the air.
He moved forward, picked up Hulida and drew back with him out of the trap’s range. It would reset itself automatically now for any moving thing of sufficient size to trigger its mechanisms.
He wasn’t sure he would find anything left of the Pointer, but the beams hadn’t come within fifty feet of it. As he came up, he heard the communicator signal inside. He put Hulida down hastily, climbed in and switched on the instrument.
The face of Govant, the team’s geophysicist, appeared in the screen.
“Jeslin, what the devil’s happened?” he demanded. “The machmen who took over the station all collapsed at the same instant just now! Ald says she’s sure you caused it in some manner. They’re alive but unconscious.”
“I know,” Jeslin said. “I suggest you disarm them and dump them into one of the cages.”
“That’s being done, of course!” Govant said irritably. “We’re not exactly stupid. But—”
“You’re yelling for help from any navy units around?”
“Naturally.” Govant looked aside, away from the screen, added, “Apparently, we’ve just had a response! But it may be weeks before help arrives, and the machmen said they had a spaceship which—”
“Their ship won’t be a problem,” Jeslin said. “Get a few airtrucks over here, will you? I’ll give you my location. In a rather short time, I’m going to have a great many machmen around to transport back to the station’s cages.”
Govant stared at him. “What did you do to them?”
“Well,” Jeslin said, “for all practical purposes, I’ve blown out their cortical fuses. I walked one of them into a hypnoshock trap here, and it hit the others through him. I’ll give you the details when I get back. At present, they’re simply paralyzed. In a few hours, they’ll be able to move again; but for days after that, they won’t make any move that somebody hasn’t specifically told them to make. By that time, we should have the last of them locked up.”
He stepped out of the Pointer after Govant had switched off and went back to Hulida, mentally shaping the compulsive suggestions which presently would shut off the wandering tractors, round up the tranced fliers, and bring the captured patrol boat and the machman spaceship gliding obediently down to the planet.
The Other Likeness
When he felt the sudden sharp tingling on his skin which came from the alarm device under his wrist watch, Dr. Halder Leorm turned unhurriedly from the culture tray he was studying, walked past the laboratory technician to the radiation room, entered it and closed the door behind him. He slipped the instrument from his wrist, removed its back plate, and held it up to his eye.