Three guards stood shoulder to shoulder, their guns pointed inward,
their lovely unhuman faces blank. A red-clad being, shorter than
they, set down a bowl of stew and a container of water. The food was
unidentifiable, but its odor was savory. Holbrook felt sure it had
been manufactured for the Terrestrials.
"For the zoo!" he said aloud. And then, wildly: "No, for the filing
cabinet. File and forget. Lock us up and throw away the key because
_there is nothing else they can do with us_."
Ekaterina caught his arm. "Back," she warned.
Grushenko stood making gestures and talking, under the golden eyes of
the guards. They loomed over him like idols from some unimaginable
futurism. And suddenly the hatred which seethed in Holbrook left him;
he knew nothing but pity. He mourned for Zolotoy the damned, which had
once been so full of hope.
But he must live. His eyes turned to Ekaterina. He heard the frosty
breath rattle in her nostrils. Already the coryza viruses in her
bloodstream were multiplying; chill and oxygen starvation had weakened
her. Fever would come within hours, death within weeks. And Grushenko
would spend weeks trying to communicate. Or if he could be talked
around to Holbrook's beliefs, it might be too late: that electronic
idiot-savant might decide at any moment that the prisoners were safest
if killed--
"I'm sorry," said Holbrook. He punched Ekaterina in the stomach.
She lurched and sat down. Holbrook side-stepped the red Zolotoyan,
moved in under the guards, and seized a blast-gun with both hands. He
brought up his foot in the same motion, against a bony black-clad knee,
and heaved.
The Zolotoyan reeled. Holbrook staggered back, the gun in his hands.
The other two guards trilled and slewed their own weapons about.
Holbrook whipped the blaster up and squeezed its single switch.
Lightning crashed between blue walls.
A signal hooted. Automatic alarms--there would be guards coming,
swarming all over, and their only reaction was to kill. "The computer!"
bawled Holbrook. "We've got to get the computer!" Two hideously charred
bodies were collapsing. The stench of burnt flesh grabbed his gullet.
"You murdering fool!" Grushenko roared it out, leaping at him. Holbrook
reversed his blaster and struck with the butt. Grushenko fell to the
floor, dazed. The third black Zolotoyan fumbled after a dropped gun.
Holbrook destroyed him.
"The computer," he shouted. "It's not a brain, only an automaton."
He reached down, caught Ekaterina by the wrist and hauled her up.
His heart seemed about to burst; rags of darkness swirled before his
eyes. "But it _is_ the interstellar commissar," he groaned. "It's the
only thing able to decide about us ... and now it's sure to decide on
killing--"
"You're insane!" shrieked the woman, from light-years away. She clawed
after his weapon. He swayed in black mists, batted her away with his
own strengthless hands.
"I haven't time now," he whispered. "I love you. Will you come with me?"
He turned and staggered through the door, past the scuttering red
servitor, over the corpses and into the hall. The siren squealed before
him, around him, through him. His feet were leaden clogs; Christ, what
had become of the low gravity--_help me, help me_.
Hands caught his arm. "Lean on me, Eben Petrovitch," she said.
They went down a vaulted corridor full of howling. His temples beat,
as if his brain were trying to escape the skull, but vision cleared a
little. He saw the wall at the end. He stopped by the control stud.
"Let me go through first," he said in his burning throat. "If the
guards get me, remember the computer must be destroyed. We're safe if
it can be destroyed. Wait, now."
The wall gaped for him. He stepped through. The green technicians moved
serenely under the huge machine, servicing it as if he did not exist.
_In a way_, he thought, _I don't_. He sped across the floor. His boots
resounded hollowly on the stone. He came up to the machine and opened
fire.
Thunder roared in the chamber. The technicians twittered and ran around
him. One of them posted himself at a board whose pattern of signaling
lights was too intricate for men to grasp, and called out orders. The
others began to fetch replacement parts. And the siren yammered. It was
like no alarm on Earth; its voice seemed almost alive.
Four guards burst in from the outer hall. Holbrook sprang behind a
technician, who kept stolidly by his rank of levers. The guards halted,
stared around, and began to cast about like sniffing dogs. Holbrook
shot past the green Zolotoyan, dropped one, dropped two. A human would
have sacrificed the enemy's living shield to get at the enemy; but
no black had ever fired on a green. Another guard approached and was
killed. But where had the fourth gotten to?
Holbrook heard the noise and whirled about. The gaunt shape had been
almost upon him, from the rear. Ekaterina had attacked. They rolled
about the floor, she snarling, he with a remote god-like calm even
as he wrestled. He got her by the throat. Holbrook ran up behind and
clubbed his blaster. After more blows than a man could have survived,
the guard slumped.
The woman crawled from beneath, gasping. Holbrook's strength was fled,
his lungs one enormous agony. He sank to the floor beside her. "Are you
all right?" he forced. "Are you hurt, my dearest?"
"Hold."
They crouched side by side and turned faces which bled from the nose
back toward the machine. Ilya Grushenko stood there. A blaster was
poised in his hands. "Drop your gun or I shoot," he said. "You and her
both."
Holbrook's fingers went slack. He heard the remote clatter of his
weapon as it struck stone.
"Thank you, Eben Petrovitch," said Grushenko. "Now they have it proven
to them which of our factions is their friend."
"You don't understand!" choked Holbrook. "Listen to me!"
"Be still. Raise your hands. Ah, there--" Grushenko flicked eyes toward
a pair of guards trotting into the room. "I have them, comrades!" he
whooped.
Their fire converged on him. He ceased to be.
Holbrook had already scooped up his own blaster. He shot down the two
black Zolotoyans. He stood up, swaying and still scrabbling after air.
Ekaterina huddled at his feet. "You see," he said wearily, "we are in
the ultimate collectivist state." She clung to his knees and wept.
He had not fired many bolts into the computer when its siren went
quiet. He assumed that the orders it had been giving were thereby
canceled. He took the woman and they walked away from the pathetically
scurrying greens, out into the hallway, past a few guards who ignored
them, and so to a flying platform.