said. “I think we’d better enjoy it while we can.”
He looked sourly at the stack of waxed cardboard cartons next to him. Each
one was stenciled “Meals, Ready-To-Eat” and a lot of government-sounding
gobbledygook. Wiz didn’t know where Moira had gotten them, but he hoped
she got back soon with some real food.
Noiselessly the metal spider crept toward the darkened buildings. At the
edge of the tall grass it paused, bobbed slowly as if testing the air, and
then skittered across the open space to the concealing shadows.
Carefully lifting only one leg at a time it eased its way along the wall,
every sense alert for any sign of danger or alarm.
Danger there was none. The building’s spells discouraged animals, kept
away insects and were proof against dwarves. But there was nothing to keep
away or warn of a robot.
There was a door halfway down the wall. Standing on its hind pair of legs
and balancing itself with its left and right pairs, the robot stretched
its front pair full out to try the knob. When it found the door locked,
the robot retracted its legs and lowered its egg-shaped body to the
ground. There it sat, listening intently for several minutes. A sliver of
moon appeared through the scudding clouds, faintly illuminating the
building. The robot stayed pressed to the ground, looking like a rock and
a couple of sticks to the casual observer.
At last the moon disappeared into the clouds and the robot stretched up to
the doorknob again. It swiveled its body and a beam of blinding red light
lanced out of its underside to trace around the knob and lock.
If there had been anyone in the wing the brilliant light and the smell of
burnt paint and scorched metal would have alerted them. But there wasn’t.
No one heard when the spider robot wrenched the lock free and no one saw
when the thing pulled open the door a crack and slipped through.
It was pitch dark in the corridor, but that didn’t matter to something
equipped with image intensifiers backed by ultrasonics. Slowly, carefully
the robot moved down the deserted hallways, its front pair of legs
extended before it like antennae.
At the end of the third corridor, the spy droid detected a light far off
to the right. It eased down the corridor, becoming more cautious as its
sound sensors began to pick up voices.
” . . . and he used Interrupt 21h for error handling!”
There was a burst of laughter and then a second voice started to tell
another joke.
Ahead was a doorway letting warm yellow light out into the hall. The robot
pressed itself hard against the wall and crept ahead one tentative step at
a time, moving sideways like a steel crab.
It paused again at the door and then with exquisite caution it eased a
single leg around the corner so the video sensor in the “ankle” could scan
the room.
Wiz was sitting in the console chair with his feet up on the console,
tearing a bite out of an oversized sandwich. Danny was perched on the edge
of the console drinking from a mug and Jerry was over at the table
building himself another sandwich.
” . . . so, anyway,” Wiz said around the half-chewed sandwich, “the
physicist says, ‘First assume a spherical chicken of uniform density.’ ”
Jerry roared and Danny broke up in a coughing fit when some of his drink
went down wrong.
Very funny, Craig thought as he looked at the image his scout was sending
back. Laugh while you can.
Come on, damn you! Wiz stared hard at the computer screen. We’re running
out of time! But the twisting, convoluted blue shape looked no different
today than it had before.
“I hate asymptotically converging algorithms,” he growled. “The closer you
get to the solution the longer they take.”
“If you’ve got a better algorithm it’s not too late,” Jerry said mildly.
Wiz just snorted. “I’m just on edge. It’s a combination of being a little
kid waiting for Christmas and the fact that the longer we’re here the
riskier it gets.”
“Plus, Moira’s not here,” Danny said from the table where he and June were