The robot weighed eight tons. Its crashing fall and roll tore loose boulders from the cliffs themselves. Rocks that the wind had deposited in the passage were loosened and tumbled after the robot. When it stopped rolling it was under a mountain, twenty-five to thirty tons of sand, another thirty-five to fifty tons of rocks and boulders.
Trace stared at the hill of rocks and sand, awed by what he had done. As he watched, the hill stirred, shifted, a rock rolled down from it, then several more, and a spot of brightness appeared near the top. The robot’s laser was still working. It was burning its way out.
It reminded Trace of a nightmare in which no matter how far or how fast he ran, everytime he looked over his shoulder the devil was still there, the same distance, still grinning in anticipation. He watched the red spot until it vanished. The laser had cut through. The robot would widen the opening, dislodging or burning rocks to free itself, and then they would be back where they had started. He watched, but the hole didn’t grow. The robot couldn’t move. The laser happened to be pointing in that direction when it was turned on, but it could not direct the beam to another spot. Trace laughed. His lips cracked more and bled, and it hurt his throat, but he laughed until he was weak and the laughter had turned to sobbing. It passed and he looked again at the hole made by the laser. It had grown slightly. Perhaps it had a range of freedom of an inch or so, back and forth one inch, or two at the most. He took off then in the dinghy as the stabbing laser bit another eighth of an inch away. The top opening grew to almost two inches in length.
Trace landed on the cliff over the passage, and cautiously he eased to the edge to look down on the mountain that was the robot’s burial mound. The cherry glow showed first on one end of the two-inch cut, then on the other. Trace backed away and looked about him. The top of the cliff was covered with stones, rocks from pea size to boulders as big as houses. He grinned and cried out with pain when his lip split further. Water. He could find the dinghy now with the screen turned off, and then he would finish burying the robot.
He almost crashed his dinghy when he landed only twenty feet from the other one, now out in the open and visible. He was crying deep in his throat when his trembling hands opened the emergency stores unit and found the water bags there. Enough water to last him for a month, two months. He drank deeply and in a minute he was sick, vomiting all of it up again. He sipped a mouthful then and let it trickle down. His throat was swollen, almost shut. He was shivering uncontrollably. Much of the water ran down his chin, ran out of his stiff mouth, spilled even before he could get it near his lips. This time the small amount he allowed himself stayed down, and he took another mouthful, and then another.
After he had drunk he loaded the water and the fuel from the robot’s dinghy into his own, and then he returned to the cliff and the robot. He had to stay near it, keep it covered. When the winds started he would return to his chimney and stay there in the shelter. During the night, when the wind was gone, he would light the robot with his spotlights, keep it covered at all times. During the day he would stay on the cliff and it would keep him busy just finding stones he could roll to the edge and push over. He worried about keeping it all done. It was a two-man job, and he was alone. It did not occur to him to leave now, to return to his orbiting ship and wait there for relief. He had trapped it, and he would hold it for them, would direct their fusion bombs to it himself. He looked down at it and saw that the hole was three inches long, first one end of the line turning red, then the other end, as the laser swept back and forth steadily without pause.
Seventeen
Trace pushed rocks over the edge of the cliff, he shoved over all that were within reach. Some of them vaporised in air, vanishing with a cloud that quickly dispersed, others hit resoundingly, now and then upsetting the balance of the artificial hill, dislodging more than they added. When the wind blew too hard for him to continue on the top of the cliff, he returned to his chimney. He drank deeply and washed himself, and then he ate; he even made coffee. He found an ointment and applied it to his lips. When the winds died down he left the chimney, landed the dinghy in the valley where he could floodlight the pile of rocks and sand and study it for any change. Almost immediately a red glow showed, not at the top this time, but three-fourths of the way up, in the side that faced the valley. The robot had been able to shift its position. The wind had driven sand over it, piling it higher on the far side, but thinning the nearer side somewhat.
Trace worked on adding rocks to the pile until the morning wind drove him back to the chimney. He was exhausted, trembling with fatigue when he turned off the engine.
It doesn’t end, Duncan. Goes on and on…
A logic box, Trace, that’s all, a logic box…
On and on automatically without thought, without heart, without pain…
You have no heart, Captain Tracy, no thought for those who live on the worlds you take, no pain for those who bleed…
Logic box, Trace… can’t do anything not programmed in, can’t think…
As an officer you have to command instant obedience in your men, not because they agree, or like your plan, or because of anything except that you pushed the buttons that put them in motion. Do you men understand that? Instant obedience. All the way up the line!
Nothingness of sleep then, and wakening to fear. How long had he slept? Was it still there? He shook all over until he located it in the visual scanner and saw that it was still covered. Weakly he staggered to the storage unit and prepared food. He would have to set an alarm, not sleep over a couple of hours at a time. He went again to the cliff-top and surveyed the hill below. The wind had piled up the rocks and sand higher than ever on the passage side of the robot, but the valley side was being denuded. He turned his detector on the hill and located the robot inside it, less than fifteen feet from the valley side of the mound. The beam was cutting a hole five inches long, not directly up now, but towards the side, back and forth, back and forth, five inches, five and a half, six… Feverishly Trace searched for rocks that he could shove over the edge. The sun climbed through the white sky, filled it and turned the world into a dazzling glare of white hot light. He worked on. He was perspiring profusely; for the first time in days he had enough water to let him sweat. He worked without thought, until suddenly he staggered. The ground was spinning, and the cliffs were rising and falling erratically.
He pitched forward. When he roused, moments later, he had no way of knowing how long he had lain there. He was burning up, dry, and he knew he was suffering from heat prostration. He had to get out of the sun, get his body temperature down, start the flood of sweat again…
He dragged himself to the dinghy and got in it. He had neglected to take the medicine that morning, he realised, had expected the abundance of water to heal him. He thought of the killer robot fighting as hard as it could to free itself, and a wave of pity passed through him. He sponged his body, caught the water in a plastic sheet to cool again that night, and sponged himself over and over.