“Could be due to the time element.” As Ashe’s voice sounded in his helmet com, the old man might have been reading his thoughts. “We left the second stop well ahead of our former schedule.”
They clung to that hope as an hour, and then two, passed and there was no movement from the tower. Pooling their recollections of the place, they were fairly certain that they had landed in the same square. And they avoided putting into words the other dire possibility—that the mechanism of the ancient port had at last been exhausted, perhaps by the very effort put upon it weeks before when the globe had been serviced there.
Renfry spoke at last. “I don’t know how much fuel we have on board. I can’t even tell you the nature of that fuel. And whether we can take off without more is also an open question. But if we can, I don’t believe we’ll be able to finish the trip. We may be working against time—but we’ll have to discover if we can push those machines into one more job. And we’ll have to do it quick!”
They swung out of the globe, and Renfry crawled under its arching side, to discover a new catastrophe. If there had been any fuel left in the ship’s sealed storage compartments, it was gone now. There was an ominous damp patch spreading from an opening at ground level.
Renfry’s voice came hollowly. “That’s done it, fellas. She’s empty. Unless you can get that pipe line on the job again, we’re grounded for keeps.”
“What made that open up?” Ross wondered with the bafflement of one to whom machines were still mysterious save for their most obvious functions.
“Might be some mechanism triggered by this.” Ashe stamped on the pavement. “Well, let’s go and look for the robot and that animated pipe line.”
They walked toward the tower. From ground level the structure looked even more pointed and needle-like. There was an opening at the foot, the doorway from which the robot had come. Ashe reached that and stood for a moment peering in.
The chunky robot which had clanked into duty at their first visit was still there, just within the doorway. And beyond, plain to be seen in a rusty, yellowish light, were a corporal’s guard of its fellows. All alike, they were backed against the far wall as if awaiting some long-past official inspection.
From a well in the center of the floor, to be glimpsed around the bulk of the robot in the doorway, was a massive piece of metal which Travis recognized as the “head” of the snake pipe line. Ashe reached out almost reluctantly to push the robot. To their surprise the machine, which had appeared so massive and immobile answered to that handling. It did not react the way a shaken alarm clock would. Instead it toppled forward, oddly flaccid. One of the arms clattered loose and spun across the pavement to strike the snake’s head.
“It’s moving! Look—it’s moving!”
Ross was right. In a jerky, sullen manner the heavy end of the mobile pipe line raised, inched forward about a foot while the humans held their breaths in hope—until it fell supinely once more.
“Hit it again,” advised Ross.
Ashe edged around the prostrate robot to inspect more closely what they could see of the pipe. This small portion displayed no signs of deterioration. He stooped, took a good grip on the “head” and tugged. Then he hurriedly jumped back while Ross and Travis kicked the robot out of the path of the creeping snake. Two feet—three—out in the open it went—and headed for the ship. Renfry saw them coming and waved, crawling back under the bulge of the globe to make ready for the pipe’s arrival.
But they had exulted too soon. Some four feet away from the tower the head sank to earth once more. Ashe tried his former method of revival, without result. They took turns shaking it, together and separately. It was much heavier than the robot and they could not urge it into any further effort.
Renfry came to join in a consultation. He went back to inspect the well from which the pipe emerged, only to return as baffled as before.
“Can we pull it by hand?” Travis wanted to know.
“That’s what we’ll have to try now.” Renfry was grim.
Bringing the light, tough rope from the ship, they fastened lines about the “head,” and set to work. At Ashe’s command they gave a concentrated jerk. The stubborn pipe gave, started forward, but not under its own power. They gained another four, five feet but the effort required to move that dead weight was exhausting. Now their gains were shorter, and the strain they must exert to produce them grew greater and greater.
Ross tripped, went down, levered himself up, his face set in a snarl. He seized the rope again as if it were a man he could tangle with—and jerked in concert with the other three. This time there was no yielding at all, and their feet slipped on the cracked and age-old stone.
18
Travis sat back on his heels in the immemorial position of the dismounted range rider. The others sprawled beside the tow rope, their faces beet red from their efforts. Renfry squirmed, braced himself on his hands and began to fumble with the latch of his helmet. He threw the bubble back and breathed hard with the immediacy of a drowning man.
“Put on your helmet, you fool!” Ashe raised his head from his arms; his voice in the com was broken by the laboring of his lungs.
But Renfry shook his head, his lips moving in words sealed away by the protection he no longer shared. Travis’ fingers went to the fastenings of his own helmet.
“I don’t think we need these.” He pulled off the bubble and lifted his head to meet the touch of a small, playful breeze. The air was crisp, like that of a Terran autumn. And it filled his lungs in an invigorating way. He reached for the rope, ready to try again.
“There’s no use in pulling ourselves blind.” Ashe’s voice was no longer rendered metallic by the alien com. “The trouble may lie back in the tower.”
Renfry began to crawl on his hands and knees back the length of the pipe, inspecting its surface as he went. At last he staggered to his feet and lurched through the door, the others after him.
They found the technician down by the mouth of the well from which the pipe extended. He was examining the covering there, trying to wriggle the flexible tube back and forth.
“The thing must be caught—below this!” He hammered his fist against the capping.
“Can we get that lid off and see?” Ross wanted to know.
“We can try.”
But such an operation required tools of a sort—levers, wedges . . . There was the line of waiting robots—could parts of their bodies be put to more practical purposes? Ross had picked up a loose “arm,” shed by the one which had disintegrated, testing the rod’s strength with all the force of his own arm and shoulder.
Travis studied the well capping. There was no opening, no vestige of crack into which a wedging tool might be inserted. And now Renfry ran his hands about the ring through which the pipe issued, striving to find by touch what none of them could see. He tapped with the rod, first lightly and then with increasing force, leaving some dents and scratches, but making no other impression on the fitting.
“Does that unscrew?” Ross suggested.
Renfry scowled, spat out a couple of short and forceful words. He transferred his efforts from the pipe to the outer rim of the cover. And there he did make a promising discovery. They worked fast, one at each, to pick the accumulated dust of centuries out of four depressions in which were sunk knobs which might just be the heads of bolts.
Then they turned to the broken robot, dismantled its remains, until they were equipped with pieces of metal to force those heads. It was slow, disheartening work. Once Travis went back to the ship to gather up the containers of the jelly which had poisoned him during the testing of the supplies. They smeared the stuff in and around the stubborn knobs, hoping it would lubricate and loosen, while they pounded and prodded. But their efforts were encouraged when the first bolt yielded, and Renfry used blistered fingers to work it free. And that small success gave a spurt to their labors.
It was nightfall and they were working mainly by touch when Ashe’s bolt came free—the second one.
“This is it for now,” he told them. “We can’t rig any sort of light in here and there’s no use in trying to free the rest in the dark. I’ve hit my fingers more than this blasted thing for the past half hour.”