leaped snarling andclawing back into the night.
* * * * *
Mentally, Alan tried to figure the charge remaining in his blaster.There wouldn't be much. "Enough for a few more shots, maybe. Why thedevil didn't I load in fresh cells this morning!"
The robot crashed on, louder now, gaining on the tired human. Legsaching and bruised, stinging from insect bites, Alan tried to forcehimself to run holding his hands in front of him like a child in thedark. His foot tripped on a barely visible insect hill and a wingedswarm exploded around him. Startled, Alan jerked sideways, crashing hishead against a tree. He clutched at the bark for a second, dazed, thenhis knees buckled. His blaster fell into the shadows.
The robot crashed loudly behind him now. Without stopping to think, Alanfumbled along the ground after his gun, straining his eyes in thedarkness. He found it just a couple of feet to one side, against thebase of a small bush. Just as his fingers closed upon the barrel hisother hand slipped into something sticky that splashed over his forearm.He screamed in pain and leaped back, trying frantically to wipe theclinging, burning blackness off his arm. Patches of black scraped offonto branches and vines, but the rest spread slowly over his arm asagonizing as hot acid, or as flesh being ripped away layer by layer.
Almost blinded by pain, whimpering, Alan stumbled forward. Sharp musclespasms shot from his shoulder across his back and chest. Tears streamedacross his cheeks.
A blue arc slashed at the trees a mere hundred yards behind. He screamedat the blast. "Damn you, Pete! Damn your robots! Damn, damn ... Oh,Peggy!" He stepped into emptiness.
Coolness. Wet. Slowly, washed by the water, the pain began to fall away.He wanted to lie there forever in the dark, cool, wetness. For ever, andever, and ... The air thundered.
In the dim light he could see the banks of the stream, higher than aman, muddy and loose. Growing right to the edge of the banks, the junglereached out with hairy, disjointed arms as if to snag even the dirtylittle stream that passed so timidly through its domain.
Alan, lying in the mud of the stream bed, felt the earth shake as theheavy little robot rolled slowly and inexorably towards him. "The LordHigh Executioner," he thought, "in battle dress." He tried to stand buthis legs were almost too weak and his arm felt numb. "I'll drown him,"he said aloud. "I'll drown the Lord High Executioner." He laughed. Thenhis mind cleared. He remembered where he was.
* * * * *
Alan trembled. For the first time in his life he understood what it wasto live, because for the first time he realized that he would sometimedie. In other times and circumstances he might put it off for a while,for months or years, but eventually, as now, he would have to watch,still and helpless, while death came creeping. Then, at thirty, Alanbecame a man.
"Dammit, no law says I have to flame-out _now_!" He forced himself torise, forced his legs to stand, struggling painfully in the shin-deepooze. He worked his way to the bank and began to dig frenziedly, chesthigh, about two feet below the edge.
His arm where the black thing had been was swollen and tender, but heforced his hands to dig, dig, dig, cursing and crying to hide the pain,and biting his lips, ignoring the salty taste of blood. The soft earthcrumbled under his hands until he had a small cave about three feet deepin the bank. Beyond that the soil was held too tightly by the roots fromabove and he had to stop.
* * * * *
The air crackled blue and a tree crashed heavily past Alan into thestream. Above him on the bank, silhouetting against the moons, thekiller robot stopped and its blaster swivelled slowly down. Frantically,Alan hugged the bank as a shaft of pure electricity arced over him,sliced into the water, and exploded in a cloud of steam. The robot shookfor a second, its blaster muzzle lifted erratically and for an instantit seemed almost out of control, then it quieted and the muzzle againpointed down.
Pressing with all his might, Alan slid slowly along the bank inches at atime, away from the machine above. Its muzzle turned to follow him butthe edge of the bank blocked its aim. Grinding forward a couple of feet,slightly overhanging the bank, the robot fired again. For a split secondAlan seemed engulfed in flame; the heat of hell singed his head andback, and mud boiled in the bank by his arm.
Again the robot trembled. It jerked forward a foot and its blaster swungslightly away. But only for a moment. Then the gun swung back again.
Suddenly, as if sensing something wrong, its tracks slammed intoreverse. It stood poised for a second, its treads spinning crazily asthe earth collapsed underneath it, where Alan had dug, then it fell witha heavy splash into the mud, ten feet from where Alan stood.
Without hesitation Alan threw himself across the blaster housing,frantically locking his arms around the barrel as the robot's treadschurned furiously in the sticky mud, causing it to buck and plunge likea Brahma bull. The treads stopped and the blaster jerked upwardswrenching Alan's arms, then slammed down. Then the whole housing whirledaround and around, tilting alternately up and down like a steel-skinnedwater monster trying to dislodge a tenacious crab, while Alan, arms andlegs wrapped tightly around the blaster barrel and housing, pressedfiercely against the robot's metal skin.
Slowly, trying to anticipate and shift his weight with the spinningplunges, Alan worked his hand down to his right hip. He fumbled for thesheath clipped to his belt, found it, and extracted a stubby huntingknife. Sweat and blood in his eyes, hardly able to move on the wildlyswinging turret, he felt down the sides to the thin crack between therevolving housing and the stationary portion of the robot. With a quickprayer he jammed in the knife blade--and was whipped headlong into themud as the turret literally snapped to a stop.
The earth, jungle and moons spun in a pinwheeled blur, slowed, andsettled to their proper places. Standing in the sticky, sweet-smellingooze, Alan eyed the robot apprehensively. Half buried in mud, it stoodquiet in the shadowy light except for an occasional, almost spasmodicjerk of its blaster barrel. For the first time that night Alan allowedhimself a slight smile. "A blade in the old gear box, eh? How does thatfeel, boy?"
He turned. "Well, I'd better get out of here before the knife slips orthe monster cooks up some more tricks with whatever it's got for abrain." Digging little footholds in the soft bank, he climbed up andstood once again in the rustling jungle darkness.
"I wonder," he thought, "how Pete could cram enough brain into one ofthose things to make it hunt and track so perfectly." He tried tovisualize the computing circuits needed for the operation of itstracking mechanism alone. "There just isn't room for the electronics.You'd need a computer as big as the one at camp headquarters."
* * * * *
In the distance the sky blazed as a blaster roared in the jungle. ThenAlan heard the approaching robot, crunching and snapping its way throughthe undergrowth like an onrushing forest fire. He froze. "Good Lord!They communicate with each other! The one I jammed must be callingothers to help."
He began to move along the bank, away from the crashing sounds. Suddenlyhe stopped, his eyes widened. "Of course! Radio! I'll bet anythingthey're automatically controlled by the camp computer. That's where theirbrain is!" He paused. "Then, if that were put out of commission ..." Hejerked away from the bank and half ran, half pulled himself through theundergrowth towards the camp.
Trees exploded to his left as another robot fired in his direction, toofar away to be effective but churning towards him through the blackness.
Alan changed direction slightly to follow a line between the two robotscoming up from either side, behind him. His eyes were well accustomed tothe dark now, and he managed to dodge most of the shadowy vines andbranches before they could snag or trip him. Even so, he stumbled in thewiry underbrush and his legs were a mass of stinging slashes from ankleto thigh.
The crashing rumble of the killer robots shook the night behind him,nearer sometimes, then falling slightly back, but following constantly,more unshakable than bloodhounds because a man can som
etimes cover ascent, but no man can stop his thoughts. Intermittently, likephotographers' strobes, blue flashes would light the jungle about him.Then, for seconds afterwards his eyes would see dancing streaks ofyellow and sharp multi-colored pinwheels that alternately shrunk andexpanded as if in a surrealist's nightmare. Alan would have to pause andsqueeze his eyelids tight shut before he could see again, and the robotswould move a little closer.
To his right the trees silhouetted briefly against brilliance as a thirdrobot slowly moved up in the distance. Without thinking, Alan turnedslightly to the left, then froze in momentary panic. "I should be at thecamp now. Damn, what direction am I going?" He tried to think back, tovisualize the twists and turns he'd taken in the jungle. "All I need isto get lost."
He pictured the camp computer with no one to stop it, automaticallysending