“With all of us,” Hermann said.
They drank, and the helmet was secured. Goring climbed up a short ladder into the top of the submarine and got himself with some difficulty into the hatch. Loga went up and, looking down into the hatchway, repeated the operation instructions. Then he closed the hatch.
Loga, as chief of operations, took the chair in the revolving platform. The others seated themselves before control consoles and began the adjustments taught them by the Ethical.
The first of the armed coffin-shapes lifted and headed toward the doorway. That was Burton’s. Behind it came Alice’s, then the others. They single-filed through the exit and turned right.
When all were out, the submarine rose from the floor and followed the robots.
The descent to the floor just below sea level took him fifteen minutes. He halted his robot before a closed door above which were letters in alto-relief. Burton activated the beamers, and presently the door was cut on one side from its top to the bottom. He moved his robot over and melted through another section. Then he rammed the machine into the middle, and the cut section fell backward.
Burton saw a gigantic room filled with equipment. He shot his machine toward a closed doorway in the opposite wall. Before it got there, sections of the wall slid back, and the sphere ends of beamers moved out. Scarlet lines spat from them.
Burton moved the controls on the panel so that his robot angled upward to the right. He held it then and pressed the trigger-activation button. Scarlet lines streamed out along the edges of the screen, and he had the satisfaction of seeing a globe explode. Fragments flew against the screen but did no damage.
A few seconds later, the screen went blank.
One of the .computer’s weapons had destroyed the camera on top of the robot.
Burton cursed, and he cut off the beamers. There was nothing he could do except watch. He pressed the button that would tie his computer in with one of Loga’s cameras. Instantly, he could see from a camera on the wall above the doorway the robots had entered. His robot hovered ten feet above the floor, its front end pointed up at the beamers on the other wall. The robots were in a semicircle so that they wouldn’t get hit by their companions.
The last beamers in the room blew up, shifting the view from one camera to the next as one room after another was conquered. Alice’s robot was melted down. De Marbot’s camera was destroyed. Tai-Peng’s was pierced by three beams at once, and it fell as some vital part was melted.
The others went dead one by one until only the submarine was left. The dirigible-shaped craft took over then, cutting through two doors, its thick hull drilled into by the computer’s beamers.
The submarine came to a doorway wide enough to admit it but crossed by beams from ten weapons. Hermann shot his craft through it and came out into the next room with a small section of the stern cut off and many deep holes in the hull.
Ahead of him, at the opposite war), was another entrance. Here was where he would have to abandon his craft. He drove it at great speed, slowed it a few feet from the doorway, and, while scarlet lines melted holes in the hull, climbed out. Immediately, the beamers transferred to him.
Goring fell out onto the floor, shielded from half of the weapons by the vessel but the target of the others. He got up slowly and staggered through the door entrance. Ranks of beamers turned toward him and tracked him as he ran toward the other doorway leading to the valve room. Just before he got to it, a door slid out from a recess and blocked the entrance. Ignoring the beamers, he began cutting through the door. He made a small hole, and he removed the cube holding the card and threw it ahead of him. Then he crawled through the hole, his beamer in his hand.
Burton and the others could hear his heavy breathing.
A cry of agony.
“My leg!”
“You’re almost there!” Loga shouted.
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