Buck muttered, “Otie.” The coyote’s puffed eyes turned toward him, then glazed over. Buck jerked up and made a derisive noise. “Always was a dumb pooch,” he said harshly. Mitzie, drawn even with Llewellyn, looked on coldly.
Phil started ahead, drugs battling nausea inside him, so that the dim corridor seemed both vivid and unreal.
“Where are you going?” Carstairs demanded.
Phil shrugged. “To find what I came for,” he said hazily.
“Well, keep away from the cats,” Carstairs called after him softly, but Phil was already hugging the wall.
“How we know those sing’lar missles won’t heat up and go for us like they went for Otie?” he heard Buck demand fretfully.
“The others got through, didn’t they?” Carstairs said irritably.
“What others?” Phil heard Buck ask.
“The ones who burnt the lock on the door, the ones who threw the cats ahead of them to draw the missiles,” Carstairs told him impatiently. “Incidentally, if any of the missiles start spinning their tails, you might try throwing your coat over them.”
Beyond the dead cats, Phil came to a silvery mesh barricade with several jagged cuts in it, three of them making a crude doorway. The mesh looked fine and strong enough to have kept the wasps on this side. He stepped over the fallen section of mesh. The cut ends of silvery wire were rounded and fused, as if by great heat.
Just beyond the mesh lay a chunky man in a gray, company-guard uniform. He had a gun in his hand. He was intact except that the top of his head had rolled about a foot away. It had been sliced off tidily just above the nose by something hot. Phil remembered how neatly the blue needle had sliced the steel beam. He hurried past toward an open arch just ahead, and jerked back from a large gray snake coiled there. Then he saw that the snake was a robot doorman like Old Rubberarm, and looking higher he saw that it had been sliced off close to the wall.
Mitzie and the rest came through the mesh. Carstairs kneeled eagerly by the dead man and examined the gun he was clasping, but a moment later got up with a shrug.
“Not an ortho, eh?” Buck inquired. “Usin’ those sing’lar missiles, you’d think they’d be up to date in other things.”
“No, just an ordinary gas gun,” Carstairs told him. “But we can be pretty sure his head wasn’t taken off by a red hot buzz saw. The others must have orthos.” He turned on Phil and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. “Look here, clown,” he said quietly, “who are those others? You must have known someone was going to break in here tonight. You were counting on that door being open.”
“We are a bit like jackals, aren’t we?” Phil remarked dreamily.
Carstairs twisted his jacket. “Who were they?”
Phil didn’t react, but he did jerk around suddenly when he heard Moe Brimstine say metallically, “Whatcha want, Mack?”
Llewellyn had pulled out the stub of gray robot arm sticking from the wall.
“Quit that,” Carstairs ordered curtly, letting go of Phil.
“Take it easy, Carstie old boy,” Llewellyn said with a smiling flash of white teeth. “Here’s a bit of an odd thing. See where whatever sliced this robot arm cut into the wall beyond? Well, follow back from the cut in a straight line through the slice in the robot arm.”
Like the others, Phil followed Llewellyn’s directions and saw that the straight line ended in a deep cut in the floor a half dozen feet behind them.
“I don’t git it,” Buck said. “You mean somebody shot some kind of beam from the next floor under us?”
Llewellyn said, “Hardly. The evidence points to a gun that shoots in opposite directions at the same time. I fancy that if we’d have looked behind us at the head of the stairs, we’d have seen some cuts mirror-imaging those in the mesh.”
He thinned his eyes at Carstairs. “I’m beginning to think orthos are rather strange weapons, Carstie old boy.” He glanced at Phil. “You said they’re blue and sizzle, Mr. Gish. Do they also backfire?”
“Say, look at this here communicator,” Buck interrupted. He had been poking around the side of the corridor behind the guard. “One button’s got a new-looking gadget rigged up to it that’s pushed it twice now while I’ve been watching.”
“Don’t touch it,” Carstairs said. “It’s probably a button Headless here is supposed to thumb every so often to show he’s on guard. Whoever broke in ahead of us knows their business. Once more, clown, who were they?”
“Yeah, talk,” Buck said, coming up beside Carstairs. “I figure you’re responsible for my Otie gettin’ killed.”
“Indeed, do,” Llewellyn said, at the same moment letting go of the stub arm which contracted toward the wall until it was like a wrinkled scar, while at the same time, as though internal injuries were now showing up in the thing, a broken clockworks version of Moe Brimstine’s voice wheezed, “That’s right, Mack. Go away and stay away.”
In the moment while that eerie and ominous admonition held everyone else stockstill, Phil walked with drugged aplomb past Llewellyn and through the arch.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I imagine you would like to inspect the treasure house.”
He faced a room that was not extremely high ceilinged, but so wide and long that the only clearly visible wall was the one against which they were standing. The room was not brightly lit, yet it seemed so because of the brightness of the two sorts of ranked objects on which the light fell. To the left were row on endless row of sales-robots, shiny high turtle shapes with a smaller dome set on the main one, the same efficient metal hucksters that daily and eveningly roamed the streets, guiding themselves and spotting customers by hypersonic radar and visual scanner. Only now their fascinating windows for displaying samples were closed, their money collecting and commodity bestowing arms were neatly folded, the restless wheels under their metal skirts were still, and their dulcet voices rich with a restrained sex appeal suitable to robots (male voices for females, female for males, sprightly and wise-cracking for children) were likewise silent.
To the right, marshaled with equal precision, were a host of dress-display robots, arrayed in everything from high collared sable evening cloaks to bathing jewelry. Their hair gleamed with a hundred tints, their suede-rubber skins glowed with a creamy seductiveness, they held themselves with the poise of princesses, but like the sales-robots they were still. No slinky parading, no cute individualized gestures, no mysterious or haughty smiles, no soft lips opening to recite the qualities and prices of the garments they were modeling. They all stared straight ahead like Egyptian mummies not yet wrapped and indeed one, appropriately crowned and clad in a filmy sheath, was a precise copy of Nefertiti.
It occurred to Phil that the ranked sales-robots and dress-display robots really were a military display, that he was looking at the armed might – the money army and the glamor army – of Fun Incorporated.
Llewellyn was the first to break the silence. He darted to the nearest sales-robot, made some practiced manipulations, and then there was a clinking and he was waving a green and silver handful and his teeth and the whites of his eyes shone gleefully in his black face.
“They’re still carrying the day’s cash!” he called softly.
Buck looked from the money army to the glamor army with greedy indecision. When Carstairs snorted contemptuously, he trotted over to help Llewellyn, who was methodically working his way down the first row of sales-robots.
Despite his show of greater self control, it was obvious that Carstairs’ hands were itching too. He looked at Phil uncertainly. Then, “Wake up, Mitz,” he commanded sharply. She obediently turned toward him an oddly incurious face. “Mitz,” he went on, “I want you to guard the clown. If he tries to get away or goes for any buttons, use your shiv on him.” She nodded.