Time went by, and more half-tracs came, and they waited in the dark Then they heard that same voice outside, not too far from the open door.
“Don’t go any nearer, Mr. Schuyler — they might make a rush out.”
A hard, flat voice answered him. “What the devil’s the matter with you, Alden? We haven’t got all night. Get a Worker over here and use it.”
Lindeman started to move forward. “It’s Schuyler. I’m going out there and get him. I saw those Andromeda worlds, I—”
He was almost babbling in his shaking rage. Evers caught him and held him back. “Don’t be a fool, our only chance is to wait them out.”
“What is a Worker?” Sharr asked worriedly.
Evers said, “The Workers are the big remote-controlled robots used for heavy jobs. Schuyler used some of them, fitted up with destruction-beams, out there at Andromeda, from what we heard. I was afraid he’d have some of them here.”
He made up his mind. “Listen, Sharr, they don’t know you’re here with us. They’d never guess that you, who tried to sell me to them, would jump Valloa with us. You hide back in the loot here. When it’s over, wait till GC gets here and then if you get a chance, tell the GC men about everything.”
“I won’t hide!” she said instantly. “Earthmen may think Valloans are thieves, but nobody ever thought us cowards!”
“I know you’re not afraid,” he said. “But it won’t help if Schuyler gets you too. And you can help us by hiding till you can tell GC the truth.”
She was silent, and now they could hear a steely, thumping sound outside, an odd but regular rhythm, getting closer and louder.
“All right,” Sharr finally said, reluctantly, and slipped back into the darkness.
They waited. The steely sound was now a heavy, measured clanking outside the door.
The half-open warehouse door suddenly opened wide, and in it there loomed up the towering silhouette of a Worker.
CHAPTER VI
It was more awesome than any man. It was a colossus of blue metal, shaped like an upright cylinder with rounded top, towering up fifteen feet on its metal legs. It came through the high warehouse door on those legs, stepping fast with a mechanical precision, the big bulk of it poised surely by the gyroscopic stabilizers inside it, the long metal arms that ended in specialized pincer-tools held rigidly at its sides. The striding legs could take the thing over rough rubble and terrain that no wheeled vehicle could cross. It had no mechanical vision, no lens-eyes, but it had a built-in radar far more sensitive and precise than vision.
These powerful remote-controlled machines had been designed for heavy toil. Schuyler had found another use for them. He had had them fitted with high-power destruction-beams, that could be flashed from two eye-like apertures high in the cylinder. And he had sent such deadly altered Workers with his looters to Andromeda. Evers had heard from the K’harn about the stalking metal terrors and what they had done.
Evers expected the destroying beams to stab toward them as the Worker entered. But they did not.
Instead, the metal colossus came striding in toward them, raising its great arms.
“Three beams together might burn through a leg and bring it down,” Evers whispered. “The left leg at the joint, full strength. Now!”
Their weapons flashed and the three beams converged on the joint of the massive metal limb.
They had no effect whatever on the tough metal. Next instant, with a ponderous agility, the thing sprang in with great pincer-like hands reaching.
They darted back from it, scattering. It stood, as though contemplating them, immobile but infinitely threatening. It was impossible to remember that it was a machine actuated by the control of someone outside, impossible to think of it as other than alive.
Evers, crouched ready to move and hoping for a shot at a vital part of the thing, heard a voice outside saying,
“I can cut them down fast with the beams!”
And he heard Schuyler’s flat voice answering commandingly, “No! No beams. It must look as though they crashed and were killed in their ship.”
The Worker sprang again, this time at Straw.
Straw fired, and his delaying to do so was fatal. His beam splashed harmlessly off the big cylinder. The great pincer-hand swung with blurring speed toward him. Unable to draw back in time, Straw tried to duck the metal hand, and it struck the side of his head and knocked him into a tumbled heap.
Lindeman screeched in pure anger and ran in at the Worker, firing. The metal arm that had just felled Straw instantly darted and encircled Lindeman’s small figure, pressing him helpless against the cylinder. And, holding Lindeman, the Worker leaped toward Evers.
Evers, possessed by a cold rage, had no intention of attacking the Worker. Such attack had been proved futile. It seemed to him that they were done for and his only wish now was to take Schuyler with them.
He plunged past the Worker, heading for the doorway and the man outside whom he wanted to kill.
He almost made it. He was at the door, his gun raised, when he heard the rush of clanking feet right behind him and the Worker’s metal arm flashed around him and gripped crushingly. He was drawn against the cold metal side, his arms pinioned, his bones cracking.
“Got them!” said a voice outside, and then the men out there came in.
Strangled in that iron embrace, Evers hung helpless and looked down at them.
There was a man in the front of the group who was dressed in a rich, shimmering blue coverall. He was a tall man, who had run a little to fat. You didn’t notice that at first because his face held you. It was plump with good living, but there was nothing soft about it. It was the face of an emperor who has had power so long that people are no longer people to him, but creatures to be given their orders. His eyes had no pity in them as he surveyed Evers and Lindeman, only a certain resentment.
“You’ve made a lot of trouble,” he said in that hard, flat voice. “Too bad for you you had to go where you weren’t wanted.”
Lindeman said, “Schuyler.” He said other things, and his voice shook, and Schuyler paid no attention at all but turned impatiently to the bald, lean, hard-bitten man beside him.
“Take them back out to their ship, Alden. You know what to do. Remember, it must absolutely look to GC as though they died in the crash.”
Alden, the bald man, nodded curtly. “Yes, Mr. Schuyler. The Worker can take these two out — it’s safer.”
One of the other men had gone and was bending over Straw. He said, “This one’s dead. Whole skull crushed in.”
Lindeman, his face pale and tragic, looked at Evers. And Evers thought of how brief a man’s obituary could be. All the things that Straw had done, the dreams he had dreamed and the things he had laughed at, and all of a sudden it was all wrapped up and put away forever with the three words, “This one’s dead.”
“All right, bring him along,” Alden said impatiently.
There was another man with a small control-box slung on his chest. It had many buttons on it and he played upon them as expertly as an accordionist. In answer to his playing, the Worker turned ponderously.
Evers did not struggle as the Worker started out through the door with them. You could not struggle against that iron grip, and anyway the sooner they all left the warehouse, the less likely was Sharr to be discovered.
It wasn’t only that he felt sorry for the Valloan girl who had unwisely stepped into a game too big and deadly for her. He still had a bitter hope — not for themselves, they were all through, but a hope that Sharr might keep hidden till the GC cruisers came. If she could, Schuyler might still be exposed, even though he and Lindeman were dead.