_The Fight With the Robot_
Patrolman McGuire quite evidently had not passed through Patton Place
since we left it; or at least he had not noticed the broken window.
The house appeared as before, dark, silent, deserted, and the broken
basement window yawned with its wide black opening.
"I'll leave the car around on the other street," Alten said as slowly
we passed the house. "Quick--no one's in sight; you three get out
here."
We crouched in the dim entryway and in a moment he joined us.
I clung to Mary Atwood's arm. "You're not afraid?" I asked.
"No. Yes; of course I am afraid. But I want to do what we planned. I
want to go back to my own world, to my Father."
"Inside!" Alten whispered. "I'll go first. You two follow with her."
I can say now that we should not have taken her into that house. It is
so easy to look back upon what one might have done!
We climbed through the window, into the dark front basement room.
There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the
carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing
like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had
given me. Larry was similarly armed; and Alten carried a revolver.
"Which way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?"
"Yes. This way, I think."
We passed through the connecting door. The back room seemed to be a
dismantled kitchen.
"You stay with her here, a moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on,
Larry. Let's make sure no one--nothing--is down here."
I stood silent with Mary, while they prowled about the lower floor.
"It may have come and gone," I whispered.
"Yes." She was trembling against me.
* * * * *
It seemed to me an eternity while we stood there listening to the
faint footfalls of Larry and Alten. Once they must have stood quiet;
then the silence leaped and crowded us. It is horrible to listen to a
pregnant silence which every moment might be split by some weird
unearthly sound.
Larry and Alten returned. "Seems to be all clear," Alten whispered.
"Let's go into the back yard."
The little yard was dim. The big apartment house against its rear wall
loomed with a blank brick face, save that there were windows some
eight stories up. Only a few windows overlooked this dim area with its
high enclosing walls. The space was some forty feet square, and there
was a faded grass plot in the center.
We crouched near the kitchen door, with Mary behind us in the room.
She said she could recall the cage having stood near the center of the
yard, with its door facing this way....
Nearly an hour passed. It seemed that the dawn must be near, but it
was only around four o'clock. The same storm clouds hung overhead--a
threatening storm which would not break. The heat was oppressing.
"It's come and gone," Larry whispered; "or it isn't coming. I guess
that this--"
And then it came! We were just outside the doorway, crouching against
the shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle
ready.
"There!" whispered Alten.
We all saw it--a faint luminous mist out near the center of the
yard--a crawling, shifting ball of fog.
Alten and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted sidewise, away from
me. Mary stood and cast off her dark overcoat. We men were in dark
clothes, but she stood in gleaming white against the dark rectangle of
doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment only, she stood there;
then she moved back, further behind me in the black kitchen.
And in that moment the cage had materialized. We were hoping its
occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A breathless moment passed
while we stared for the first time at this strange thing from the
Unknown.... A formless, glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into
solidity. It seemed to shrink. It took form. From a wraith of a cage,
in a second it was solid. And so silently, so swiftly, came this thing
out of Time into what we call the Present! The dim yard a second ago
had been empty.
* * * * *
The cage stood there, a thing of gleaming silver bars. It seemed to
enclose a single room. From within its dim interior came a faint glow,
which outlined something standing at the bars, peering out.
The doorway was facing us. There had been utter silence; but suddenly,
as though to prove how solid was this apparition, we heard the clank
of metal, and the door slid open.
I turned to make sure that Mary was hiding well behind me. The way
back to the street, if need for escape arose, was open to her.
I turned again, to face the shining cage. In the doorway something
stood peering out, a light behind it. It was a great jointed thing of
dark metal some ten feet high. For a moment it stood motionless. I
could not see its face clearly, though I knew there was a suggestion
of human features, and two great round glowing spots of eyes.
It stepped forward--toward us. A jointed, stiff-legged step. Its arms
were dangling loosely; I heard one of its mailed hands clank against
its sides.
"Now!" Alten whispered.
I saw Alten's revolver leveling, and my own rifle went up.
"Aim at its face," I murmured.
We pulled our triggers together, and two spurts of flame spat before
us. But the thing had stooped an instant before, and we missed. Then
came Larry's shot. And then chaos.
* * * * *
I recall hearing the ping of Larry's bullet against the mailed body of
the Robot. At that it crouched, and from it leaped a dull red-black
beam of light. I heard Mary scream. She had not fled but was clinging
to me. I cast her off.
"Run! Get back! Get away!" I cried.
Larry shouted, as we all stood bathed in the dull light from the
Robot:
"Look out! It sees us!"
He fired again, into the light--and murmured, "Why--why--"
A great surprise and terror was in his tone. Beside me, with
half-leveled revolver, Alten stood transfixed. And he too was
muttering something.
All this happened in an instant. And there I was aware that I was
trying to get my rifle up for firing again; but I could not. My arms
stiffened. I tried to take a step, tried to move a foot, but could
not. I was rooted there; held, as though by some giant magnet, to the
ground!
This horrible dull-red light! It was cold--a frigid, paralyzing blast.
The blood ran like cold water in my veins. My feet were heavy with the
weight of my body pressing them down.
Then the Robot was moving; coming forward; holding the light upon us.
I thought I heard its voice--and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh.
My brain was chilling. I had confused thoughts; impressions, vague and
dreamlike. As though in a dream I felt myself standing there with
Mary clinging to me. Both of us were frozen inert upon our feet.
I tried to shout, but my tongue was too thick; my throat seemed
swelling inside. I heard Alten's revolver clatter to the stone
pavement of the yard. And saw him fall forward--out.
* * * * *
I felt that in another instant I too would fall. This damnable,
chilling light! Then the beam turned partly away, and fell more fully
upon Larry. With his youth and greater strength than Alten's or mine,
he had resisted its first blast. His weapon had fallen; now he stooped
and tried to seize it; but he lost his balance and staggered backward
against the house wall.
And then the Robot was upon him. It sprang--this mechanism!--this
machine in human form! And, with whatever pseudo-human intelligence
actuated its giant metal body, it reached under Larry for his rifle!
Its great mailed hand swept the ground, seized the rifle and flung it
away. And as Larry twisted sidewise, the Robot's arm with a sweep
caught him and rolled him across the yard. When he stopped, he lay
motionless.
I heard myself thickly calling to Mary, and the light flashed again
upon us. And then we fell forward. Clinging together, we fell....
I did not quite lose consciousness. It seemed that I was frozen, and
drifting off half into a nightmare sleep. Great metal arms were
gathering Mary and me from the ground. Lifting us; carrying us....
We were in the cage. I felt myself lying on the grid of a metal floor.
I could vaguely see the crossed bars of the ceiling overhead, and the
latticed walls around me....
* * * * *
Then the dull-red light was gone. The chill was gone. I was warming.
The blessed warm blood again was coursing through my veins, reviving
me, bringing back my strength.
I turned over, and found Mary lying beside me. I heard her softly
murmur:
"George! George Rankin!"
The giant mechanism clanked the door closed, and came with stiff,
stilted steps back into the center of the cage. I heard the hollow
rumble of its voice, chuckling, as its hand pulled a switch.
At once the cage-room seemed to reel. It was not a physical movement,
though, but more a reeling of my senses, a wild shock to all my being.
Then, after a nameless interval, I steadied. Around me was a humming,
glowing intensity of tiny sounds and infinitely small, infinitely
rapid vibrations. The whole room grew luminous. The Robot, seated now
at a table, showed for a moment as thin as an apparition. All this
room--Mary lying beside me, the mechanism, myself--all this was
imponderable, intangible, unreal.
And outside the bars stretched a shining mist of movement. Blurred
shifting shapes over a vast illimitable vista. Changing things;
melting landscapes. Silent, tumbling, crowding events blurred by our
movement as we swept past them.
We were traveling through Time!