XIII XIIIHAN heard the whine of servo-motors over the moan of wind. From where he lay, mostly buried by the mound of snow he had scraped up on his landing approach, he could see Bollux draped belly-up over a low snowbank. The halves of the ’droid’s chest plastron opened up and outward.
Blue Max’s vocoder blustered. “Hey! Let’s get moving; we’re not out of it yet!”
A drift to Han’s right sloughed and erupted. Chewbacca appeared, spitting out snow and rumbling an acid remark to the diminutive computer module.
“No, he’s right,” Han groaned to his partner. He raised himself on unsteady arms and gazed up the slope, foggily curious about whether his head was actually going to fall off or if it simply felt that way. A bobbing column of lights was wending its way down the snowfield from the Survivors’ base. Their former captors were in hot pursuit.
“The short circuit’s right on the money, folks; everybody up!” Han thrashed and floundered in the snow for a moment, then pulled himself to his feet and began beating his hands together to bring some sensation back.
Hasti was also struggling up. Han caught her hand and pulled her to her feet. She ran over to see to Badure. Chewbacca had just reclaimed his bowcaster and bandoleer from Skynx, whom he had dug free. The Wookiee growled his gratitude, patting and stroking the Ruurian’s woolly back in a gruff gesture of thanks.
Hasti was chafing Badure’s hand’s and wrists, trying to get him upright. Han moved to help and saw that the tip of the old man’s nose and patches on his cheeks were whitened.
“He’s getting frostbite. On deck, Trooper; time to depart the area.” They pulled him up. Meanwhile, with Chewbacca’s help, Bollux was once more upright.
Counting heads before striking off, Han spied Skynx bent over the gong, which had fallen face up, a flattened dome in the snow. The Ruurian was making minute examination of the whorls and patterns on the ancient metal, laboring to see in the light of moons and stars. When Han called him, the academician yelled back. “I think you’d better see this first, Captain.”
They all gathered around him. His small digits traced the raised characters. “I thought I recognized these when I first saw this object, but I was too hurried to study them. All these,” a splay of digits indicated groups of characters, “are technical notations and operating instructions. They have to do with pressure equalization and fastening procedures.”
“Then it comes from a hatch,” Badure concluded, his muffled voice coming through hands cupped to thaw out his cheeks and nose. “Some kind of decorative facing off an airlock hatch, a big one.”
Skynx agreed. “A peculiar and rather ostentatious appointment, but that is the case. Those several larger characters there in the center give the vessel’s name.” He turned bulbous red eyes to them. “It’s the Queen of Ranroon!”
In the middle of a tumult of voices—human, non-human, and electronic—Han stood imagining the treasure of entire worlds. Though cold, near exhaustion, pursued, and starved, he suddenly found himself charged with limitless energy and a dramatic determination to live and to claim the Queen’s wealth.
They were interrupted. Han’s thoughts and the confused conversations springing from Skynx’s revelation were cut short by a long note sounding in the night, a wail from a hunting horn or other signaling device.
That brought them all up short. The bobbing lights of the pursuing Survivors’ column were now well down the slope. Now and then one would drop from the line and disappear as its bearer lost footing on the treacherous snowfield and fell tumbling.
Led by Han, the escapees set out in a staggering string, helping one another as well as they could; fortunately, the snow wasn’t very deep. They reached down to scoop up handfuls of the stuff to melt in their mouths, trying to relieve the dehydration of their captivity. Beating his gloved hands together, Han considered what the hatch cover might mean. Were the Survivors guarding Xim’s treasure in their mountain warren? What had become of the Queen of Ranroon?
Hasti caught up to him in the struggling line of march. “Solo, I’ve been doing some thinking. The congregation back there isn’t just tooting their horns to hear the echoes and let us know they’re coming. I think they have patrols out and are calling the forces out on us.”
He stopped, deriding himself for having been preoccupied with the treasure. Hasti repeated her reasoning to the others. “We’re not too far from the snow line,” Badure observed. “Perhaps that’s the limit to their territory.”
Han shook his head. “We messed up church for them and left quite a few of them in some pain. They’re coming for blood and they won’t stop just because the snow does. We’d better take up a better formation. Chewie, walk the point.”
The Wookiee padded off quietly; cold and snow didn’t bother him. Protected by his thick pelt, he slipped off, keeping to the cover of the increasingly frequent rocks and boulders. The others followed more slowly in his wake, slowed because they were bereft of his giant, supportive strength.
But within minutes the Wookiee was back to draw them down into the cover of a particularly large boulder and tell Han, in quick gutterals, what he had encountered.
“There’re more of them, coming up this way,” Han translated. “Chewie thinks we can hide here and wait them out. When they’re past, we go on. Still and quiet, everybody.”
They waited for oppressive minutes, straining to make no noise, no shift of position or other movement that might betray them. Han slowly turned his head to check the progress of the Survivors from their base. The lights had made their way to the gentler part of the slope and fanned out for a ground search.
There was a slight sound, the smallest movement of rock and crunch of ice. Everyone tensed. A shape moved stealthily into view, keeping to available cover. The approaching Survivor was uncostumed but wore a hood and heavy clothing. The scout’s head turned slowly, searching the area carefully as he went. Moments later another sentinel appeared, farther across the valley on a parallel course.
Han thought he understood. The valley widened abruptly from here, and a few sentries, farther along, might not be able to stop the escapees from getting past. The sentries kept moving warily. When they were well past the escapees’ position, Han—using hand-touches to alert his companions and dictate the order of march—slipped out from behind the boulder. The servo-motors of Bollux’s body were smooth and quiet, but sounded unbearably loud to Han. He could only hope the sound didn’t carry over the wind and other noises in the night.
They had wound their way among the rocks for another half kilometer and gotten out of sight of the snowfield, and Han had just begun to let himself believe they were clear, when a yellow heatbeam flashed out of the night. It scored on a rock two meters to Bollux’s right, throwing up sparks and globs of molten mineral.
Chill, shivers, frozen feet, and caution were forgotten. Everybody scattered for cover. Hasti brought her disrupter pistol up for a return shot but Han whispered, “Don’t! He’ll pick up your position from the flash. Anybody see where the shot came from?” Nobody had. “Then, sit still. When he fires again, we’ll nail him. Aim for the point of origin.”
“Solo, we haven’t got time to sit here!” Hasti rasped fiercely.
“Then start tunneling,” he suggested.
But instead she groped, found a stone that fit her palm, and heaved it. It clattered among the loose rocks. Another heatbeam flashed yellow from the shadows at the side of the valley.
Han fired instantly and kept on firing. The others, slower than he, joined a moment later with a torrent of blaster, power pistol, disruptor, and bowcaster shots.
“Hold it, hold it,” Han ordered. “I think we got him.”
“Do we move on?” asked Badure.
Han didn’t think the light and reports of the shots would have been detectable back on the slopes. “Not yet. We have to be sure we won’t get backshot. Besides, I saw a gleam of metal where the heatbeams came from. Maybe there’s a vehicle there, or some supplies.” He shivered from the mountain air. “Anything’d be a help.”
“Then someone must investigate,” Skynx declared and was away before anybody could stop him, flowing between the rocks with his antennae held low, nearly impossible to see. I’ll have to warn him about those heroics, Han thought, he’s come a long way. To break the tense silence, he whispered to Badure, “See what happens? First you go off medal-chasing to get our weapons back and now Skynx figures he’s the valiant warrior.”
The old man chuckled softly. “The guns came in handy, didn’t they? Besides, it gave Chewbacca a chance to pay back his Life-Debt.”
Han blinked. “That’s right. Hey, what do you mean Chewbacca? We both came back for you!” Badure only laughed.
Just then Skynx called over excitedly, “Captain! Over here!” They went, slipping and stumbling with haste but still keeping low. They came to an overhang of rock, having to duck to pass under it. From the black regions within issued Skynx’s voice. “I found a glow-rod, Captain Solo. I’ll turn up the rheostat a bit.” A faint glimmer showed them the Ruurian’s face.
He had found a low, wide cave that reached in farther than they could see. The body of the single sentry was sprawled in death, hit by several of their blasts. But what excited Skynx was what had been under guard there.
“Look, a cargo lifter!” Han took the glow-rod. “Hover-raft of some kind.” He climbed into the open cockpit of the flatbed aircraft. “Looks like it was on down time; there’re a lot of burned-out components on the floorboards, and the control-panel covers are still off.”
He brightened the glow-rod. There were two more hover-rafts nearby, access panels open, gutted and cannibalized for the parts that had gone to repair the first. Han slid the notched hover bar down; the craft rose a bit.
He flicked controls; the board was clear. “Hop in; my meter’s running.”
They rushed to comply, ducking to keep from bumping heads on the cave ceiling. With one foot on a mounting step, Badure paused. “What was that?”
They all heard it—the sounds of running, voices, and the clatter of weapons. “Hot pursuit,” answered Han. “No time to punch tickets, folks: stay gripped!”
He rammed up the impeller control, red-zoning the engine. The hover-raft shot out of the cave, nearly losing Bollux, who had been in the process of boarding. Badure and Chewbacca dragged him aboard.
The Survivors were closer than Han had thought; they had assumed positions around the cave and were closing in on it. The hover-raft zoomed from the cave near ground level, engines complaining. One or two Survivors had the presence of mind to shoot as the raft flashed by, but most either stood frozen or sought a lower elevation to keep from being run down. The few shots went wild, and Hasti put out a few rounds at random to keep the Survivors’ heads down. The raft tore through a wide arc and headed down the valley.
“Where to, citizens?” Han grinned.
“Just turn on the heaters!” yelled Hasti.
The valley widened quickly, then gave way down to an open plain carpeted with bobbing, spindly amber grass. The hover-raft was equipped with rudimentary navigational gear. Han set a course for J’uoch’s mining camp. Not wanting to use the raft’s running lights, he cut his speed back and peered through the windshield, thankful it was a bright night.
The wind of their passage snatched the warmth out of the heater grids. Hasti discovered a folded tarp in one corner of the cargo bed and pulled at it, but stopped and called to the others. “Look at what they had onboard!”
Han couldn’t turn from his steering, but Chewbacca, sitting next to him, pulled a handful of the tarp over the back of the driver’s seat. Carefully fastened to the tarp were strands of plastic, meticulously fashioned to look like the amber grass of the plains. A camouflage cover.
“This crate comes equipped with an aerial-sensor, too,” Han noted. “With a little warning and time to cover up, this thing would be just about impossible to spot without first-rate equipment.” And the cave had been big enough to hold more rafts like this one. But that left the question of how a group of primitives like the Survivors, on a back-eddy planet like Dellalt, had set up an operation like this.
Han slowed just enough for Chewbacca to wrestle the collapsible canopy into place. They crowded onto the short couches of the cramped pilot-passenger compartment, lit by the glow of the dashboard instruments and Bollux’s photoreceptors. Outside, the moons and stars lit a sea of waving grassland as it blurred under the raft’s darkened bow. Eventually the heaters made some headway, and Han opened his flight jacket.
Badure sighed. “If that was the Queen’s log-recorder disk back there, we can write it off. The antenna mast destroyed it completely.”
Han posed the question: “But how did the Survivors get it in the first place? I thought it was back in the vaults.”
“They were talking like it’s been theirs all along,” Hasti put in, shifting in a futile attempt to find more room between Bollux and Badure in the back seat.
Skynx, in his best classroom voice, chimed in. “The facts, as we know them, are as follows. Lanni somehow obtained the log-recorder disk and deposited it in a lockbox in the vaults. She evinced an interest in the mountains. J’uoch discovered her secret, or some part of it, and killed Lanni in trying to obtain the disk. And, here were the Survivors with either the same disk or one identical to it.
“Now, Lanni was a pilot, flying freight and operational missions, isn’t that right? Suppose she happened to be airborne when the Survivors were holding one of their outdoor ceremonies, and either traced their signal or saw the light?”
Han nodded. “She could’ve landed somewhere, scouted, and bagged the log-recorder!” He trimmed the craft and corrected its course a bit.
Hasti agreed. “She could have. Dad taught her to fly, and a lot about wilderness survival and reconnaissance.”
Badure picked up the thread. “So she put the disk in the lockbox and stopped off across the lake to see if she could detect a bounce or signal leakage or find out anything about the Survivors’ base, or if she’d stirred them up. I bet the treasure’s back there under the mountain.”
They rode in silence for a time. Then Han spoke: “That would only leave two questions: how to get the Falcon back … and how to spend all that money.”
Han’s best efforts failed to nurse much speed from the antiquated raft. He kept the airwatch sensor on, depressed as low to the horizon astern as possible, but he detected no pursuit. He was still unsatisfied, having come up with no conclusions as to what the Survivors had been doing with those cargo craft, what the hatch face off the Queen of Ranroon actually meant, or how it was all connected with the treasure.
Dellalt’s sun set off a purple dawn; grassland disappeared under the hover-raft’s bow. They had nearly crossed the basin of grassland formed by a curve in the mountain range and were bearing toward the mining camp when Bollux leaned over the driver’s seat and said, “Captain, I’ve been making communication monitoring sweeps as you ordered, listening for activity on the Survivors’ frequency.”
Han immediately became anxious. “Are they on the air?”
“No,” answered the ’droid. “After all, their antenna mast was destroyed. But I also checked other frequencies mentioned in Skynx’s tapes, and I’ve found something peculiar. There are transmissions on a very unusual setting coming from the direction of the campsite. They’re odd because, although I can’t pick them up clearly, they appear to be cyber-command signals.”
Han’s brow furrowed. Automata-command signals? “Mining equipment?” he asked the ’droid.
“No,” answered Bollux. “These aren’t the usual heavy-equipment patterns or industrial signals.”
Badure turned the raft’s commo rig to the setting Bollux had been monitoring but was unable to pick up anything clearly. Taking a bearing from the ’droid, Han changed course minutely and made a slow approach toward the mountains. Setting the airwatch sensor to full-scan, he readied Chewbacca and the others to pull the camouflage tarp over the raft at a moment’s notice.
He came in slowly, taking his direction from the ’droid. They had already walked into one trap by investigating signals and, though it was important that they find out what these new ones meant, Han had no intention of being ambushed a second time. He lowered the raft’s lift factor until it was bending the grass down, barely clearing the ground.
“Signals strengthening, Captain,” advised Bollux.
They were approaching a rise in the plains, a ripple in the landscape preliminary to the sloping of the mountains. Han settled the hover-raft in behind the rise and got out of the craft. Parting the grass delicately, he and Chewbacca belly-crawled to the crest to have a look.
Less than a kilometer away the foothills began. Han squinted through his blaster’s scope. “There’s something down there, where that gully comes down to the plain.”
The Wookiee agreed. They withdrew with care and told the others what they had seen. Sunrise was near.
“Skynx and Hasti, take lookout on the rise,” Han directed. “Bollux and Badure, guard the raft. Chewie and I will move in; you all know the signal system. If you have to get out, at least you’ve got a boat now.” None of them made any objections, though Hasti looked as if she wanted to.
The Millennium Falcon’s captain and first mate split off to the right and left of the rise, moving stealthily through the tall, amber grass, each of them keeping careful count in his mind. They had worked together so often that they automatically orchestrated their moves, without benefit of chrono or signal.
Han swept left, approaching the anomaly in the terrain that had attracted his attention. As he had thought, the lumps at the base of the foothills were a cluster of camouflage covers, a little too sudden and consolidated to be a part of the landscape. He saw no sentries or patrols, no surveillance of any kind, and so changed course to his right.
He heard something in the grass that might have been a small insect’s buzz; the sound scarcely traveled a few meters. Han assumed his partner’s signal had been sounding for a while.
He homed to it, parted a tuft of grass, and met his copilot with a grin. They talked in quick hand-motions; Chewbacca’s recon had yielded the same results as Han’s—with one addition; there was a guard, evidently a Survivor, walking a slow post. They made their plan and moved forward again. Han’s first inclination was to use the stun-gun carried by Badure, but there was too much chance that someone would hear the discharge or see the blue light of the shot.
The sentry was dressed in common Dellaltian mode rather than in Survivor garb. He strolled along his circuit carelessly, armed with a Kell Mark II Heavy Assault Rifle. He carried the Kell at a sloppy shoulder arms. Like sentries in most of the places Han had ever seen, the man was convinced that nothing would happen and that he was walking guard for no good reason. He sauntered past, thinking thoughts of no great consequence—which was just as well. Those idle thoughts were dispelled a moment later when a hulking shape rose out of the grass behind him and expertly tapped him behind the ear with a bowcaster butt. The guard fell face-first into the grass.
Han retrieved the heavy-assault rifle, and the two partners made a hasty scout of the area. There were no more guards, but the thing that had attracted Han’s attention through the blaster scope proved most interesting. All manner of ground-effect surface vehicles, all of them cargo models, were gathered there under camouflage covers, secured. A quick series of random checks revealed no cargo aboard any of them.
“What’d they need twenty flatbeds for?” Han wondered aloud as he waved his companions forward. “Plus two or three back at the mountain base?”
The others came up behind them. Badure explained that they had secured the stolen hover-raft with its own camouflage cover, behind the rise. They helped Han and Chewbacca in a precautionary smashing of the fleet’s communication equipment. None of them could come up with a plausible reason for the strange gathering of craft either.
“There’s a gully leading up into the foothills,” Han said, jerking his thumb. “How far are we from J’uoch’s mining camp?”
“Straight up that way,” Hasti told him, indicating the gully. “We can work our way along a few ridge lines and we’ll be there. Or, we could go along the valley floors and washes.”
Han hefted the Kell rifle. “Let’s move out now; we’ll all go. I don’t want to leave anybody behind in case we get a break and get the Falcon back; we can raise ship right away.”
They started into the foothills, eyes darting nervously for any sign of ambush. Bollux, monitoring, picked up no evidence of sensors. The gully’s floor had been sluiced by rains down to hard stone, scored and chewed as if heavy equipment had passed over it. They had seen no track or tread marks on the plain, but the resilient grass probably wouldn’t have held them.
Bollux reported that the automata-command signals were much stronger now. “They’re repetitive,” the ’droid informed them, “as if someone is running the same test sequence over and over.”
The gully cut through the first two ridges and gave out on the next, the highest they had reached. The ground here was all rock, still showing signs of the passage of what Han assumed to be machinery. That the Survivors had some special interest in J’uoch’s camp was obvious; it remained to be seen if it had to do with the treasure. But uppermost in Han’s mind was recovery of the Millennium Falcon.
They topped the ridge, advancing at a low crawl, to look down into the valley below. Hasti gasped, as did Skynx with a sound like a subdued hiccup. Bollux gazed without comment, less surprised than the others. Han’s and Chewbacca’s mouths hung open, and Badure whispered, “By the Maker!”
Now the fleet of cargo craft, the marks on the stone gully floor, the gist of the Survivors’ ceremony—even the huge chamber in which they had been imprisoned—all made sense. Those monolithic stone slabs set deep in the mountain warren weren’t tables, runways, or partitions.
They were benches.
And below were gathered the occupants that sat on those benches, at least a thousand of the bulky war-robots built at the command of Xim the Despot. They stood immobile, broad and impassive, mightily armored—man-shaped battle machines half again Han’s height. They gleamed with a mirror-bright finish designed to reflect laser weaponry. Survivors moved among them with testing equipment, running the checks Bollux had detected.
“These are the ones!” Skynx whispered gleefully. “The thousand guardians Xim set onboard the Queen of Ranroon to look after his treasure. I wonder how many trips it took to ferry them all out here? And what are they here for?”
“The only possible reason’s over there,” replied Hasti, gesturing with her chin, raising up on her elbows. From their vantage point they could see J’uoch’s mining camp, which straddled two sides of a great crevasse. The barracks, shops, and storage buildings were on one side, the kilometers-wide mining-operations site on the other, the two connected by a massive trestle bridge left from old Dellaltian mining efforts. The camp seemed to be operating as usual, its heavy equipment tearing away at the ground.
And on the side of the site, Han saw something that nearly made him whoop out loud. He pounded the Wookiee’s shoulder, pointing. There, the Millennium Falcon sat on her triangle of landing gear. The starship seemed intact and operational.
But she won’t be, Han caught himself up short, if those groundpounders of Xim’s get at her.
At that moment there was a flurry of activity among the Survivors below. Their testing sequences were done. They scurried out from among the irregularly placed robots and gathered at a gleaming golden podium that had been set up on one side of the valley. A transmission horn projected from the podium, which was adorned with Xim’s death’s-head emblem. The Survivor on the podium touched a control.
Every war-robot on the valley floor straightened to alertness, squaring shoulders, coming to stiff, straddle-legged attention. Cranial turrets swung; optical pickups came to bear on the podium. The Survivor on the podium spoke.
“He’s calling the Corps Commander forward,” Skynx explained in a muted voice.
“I know that man on the podium,” Hasti whispered slowly. Then more quickly, “I recognize the white blaze in his hair. He’s the assistant to the steward of the treasure vaults!”
From the massed robots stepped their leader, identical to the others in his corps but for a golden insignia glittering on his breastplate. His rigid, weighty tread shook the ground, the epitome of military precision, his movements revealing immense power. He halted before the podium. From his aged vocoder came a deep, resonant question. Skynx translated in whispers.
“What do you require of the Guardian Corps?” the machine intoned.
“That with which you were entrusted is now in jeopardy,” answered the Survivor on the podium, the steward’s assistant.
“What do you require of the Guardian Corps?” repeated the robot, uninterested in details.
The Survivor pointed. “Follow the gully trail as we’ve marked it for you. It will bring you to your enemies. Destroy all that you find there. Kill everyone you encounter.”
The armored head regarded him for a moment, as if in doubt, then replied: “You occupy the control platform; the Guardian Corps will obey. We will pass in review, as programmed, then go forth.” The Corps Commander’s cranial turrets rotated as he issued the squeals of his signalry.
The war-robots began moving, forming an irregular line, moving just as their commander had. Without cadence or formation, they grouped to one side of the podium. But as they passed it, the transmission horn’s command circuitry automatically directed them to assume their review mode. From a massed group, they separated into ranks and files as they passed the podium, ten abreast, heavy feet rising and falling in step. With their Corps Commander at their head, the thousand war-robots marched, completing a circuit of the little valley.
Even the Survivors were hypnotized by it; the sight of their ancient charges walking again was nothing less than magical to them. Metal feet beat the canyon floor; arms as thick as a man’s waist swung in unison. Han wondered if J’uoch’s people wouldn’t be able to hear their approach even over the sound of mining operations.
At some unseen signal from their Corps Commander, the robots stopped. The commander came around to face the podium with a rocking motion. From his vocoder boomed the words: “We are ready.”
The Survivor on the podium instructed the robots to stand fast for a time. “We go now to a vantage point, from which we will observe your attack. When we are in place you may proceed against the enemy.” He and the other Survivors hurried off to watch the carnage. Presently the air was still, the war-robots waiting patiently, the only sound the distant buzz of the mining camp.
“We’ve got to get to the camp first,” Han declared as they drew back from the ridge and got to their feet.
“Are you completely vacuum-happy?” Hasti wanted to know. “We’ll get there just in time to go through the meat-grinder!”
“Not if we hurry. Those windup soldiers down there will have to go the long way around; we can run the ridge line if we’re careful and get there first. The Falcon’s our only way off this mud-ball; if we can’t get to her, we’re going to have to tip J’uoch that the robots are on their way, or they’ll rip my ship apart.”
He wished he could figure out why the Survivors were intent on destroying the mining camp and slaughtering its personnel. “Everyone keep up. I’ll go first, then Hasti, Skynx, Badure, Bollux, and Chewie on rearguard.”
Han put the heavy-assault rifle across his shoulders and set off, the others falling into their assigned places. But when Chewbacca beckoned Bollux, the labor ’droid hesitated. “I’m afraid I’m not functioning up to specifications, First Mate Chewbacca. I’ll have to come along as best I can.”
The Wookiee was torn by indecision for a moment, then trotted off after the rest, making it clear with hand motions and growls that Bollux was to come along as quickly as he could. The ’droid watched Chewbacca disappear from view, then opened his chest plastron so that he and Blue Max could speak in vocal-normal mode, as they preferred.
“Now, my friend,” he drawled to the little computer module, “perhaps you’ll explain why you wanted us to stay behind. I practically had to lie to First Mate Chewbacca to do it; we may very well be left behind.”
Max, who had taken in the situation via direct linkage with Bollux, answered simply. “I know how to stop them. The war-robots, I mean; but we’d have to destroy them all to do it. We needed time to talk it over, Bollux.”
And Blue Max related the plan he had conceived. The labor ’droid responded even more slowly than usual. “Why didn’t you mention this before, when Captain Solo was here?”
“Because I didn’t want him to decide! Those robots are doing what they were built to do, just like we are. Is that any reason to obliterate them? I wasn’t even sure I should tell you; I didn’t want you to blow your primary stacks in a decisional malfunction. Wait; what’re you doing?”
The labor ’droid’s chest plastron was swinging shut as he toed the edge of the ridge. “Seeking alternatives,” he explained, stepping off.
Bollux slid and stumbled and plowed his way down the slope to the valley floor, working with heavy-duty suspension of arms and legs to keep from being damaged. At last he came to an awkward stop at the bottom amid a minor avalanche. Standing erect, he approached the war-robots, who waited in their gleaming, exact formation.
The Corps Commander’s cranial turret rotated at Bollux’s advance. A great arm swung up, weapons-apertures opening. “Halt. Identify or be destroyed.”
Bollux replied with the recognition codes and authentication signals he had learned from Skynx’s ancient tapes and technical records. The Corps Commander studied him for a moment, debating whether this strange machine ought to be obliterated, recognition codes or no. But the war-robots’ deliberative circuitry was limited. The weapon-arm lowered again. “Accepted. State your purpose.”
Bollux, with no formal diplomatic programming to draw upon and only his experience to guide him, began hesitantly. “You mustn’t attack. You must disregard your orders; they were improperly given.”
“They were issued through command signalry of the podium.
We must accept. We are programmed; we respond.” The cranial turret rotated to face front again, indicating that the subject bore no further discussion.
Bollux went on doggedly. “Xim is dead! These orders of yours are wrong; they do not come from him; you cannot obey them!”
The turret swung to him again, the optical pickups betraying no emotion. “Steel-brother, we are the war-robots of Xim. No alternative is thinkable.”
“Humans are not infallible. If you follow these orders, they’ll lead to your destruction. Save yourselves!” He could not admit that it would be by his own hand.
The vocoder boomed. “Whether this is true or not, we carry out our orders. We are the war-robots of Xim.”
The Corps Commander faced front again. “The waiting time has elapsed. Stand aside; no further delay will be tolerated.” He emitted a squeal of signalry. The ranks of war-robots stepped off as one, arms swinging.
Bollux had to spring aside to keep from being trampled beneath them. His chest plastron swung open as he watched them go. “What do we do now?” Blue Max wanted to know. “Captain Solo and the others will be down there, too.”
There was a quiver of sorrow in Bollux’s voice modulation. “The war-robots have their built-in programming. And we, my friend, have ours.”