"Easy," came the cheerfully buzzed answer. But soon I suspected that a
cheerful tone was pure mimicry of a human way, without, necessarily, a
real, corresponding emotion. For now our escort gripped us roughly, and
drew us along through the great gulf of air, using hand-held jet-tubes
for propulsion.
* * * * *
Doc's shouted, "Hey, what goes on?" and my equivalent complaints,
were ignored. Our escort broke in two, six of its members, including
the leader, continuing to lift Doc, Jan, and me upward through the
air inside our ship, the other six, bearing what looked like massive
equipment, falling behind.
In the ceiling of our lab compartment there was a circle, still edged
with the rough scale of a tool cutting with intense heat, and there
was a hinged, circular door of metal. They had cut through the skin of
our ship, and had installed an airlock, quite like our own variety in
principle, yet so tiny that our human eyes had missed it entirely.
Helplessly we were drawn through it, and onward into the murky night of
Ganymede, over which Jupiter and his other scattered moons held sway.
Our robot-selves of course did not feel the cold, which approached
absolute zero. Nor apparently did our unarmored hosts. Nor did they
seem compelled to breath oxygen.
"Charlie! Doc!" I heard Jan call. "I hope they're not taking us
too far! The radio control hoods, keeping us in contact with our
micro-robots, here, are of limited range. We could lose the robots!..."
"Not very far," came the answer from the being who had spoken before.
"But Kobolah--myself--says it makes no difference to you."
Perhaps that strange little monster meant to reassure us. By now I had
him identified as an individual. The irregular filaments around his
eyes were longer and paler than those of his henchmen.
A Ganymedean wind wafted us along, our escort perhaps using it to cover
distance, righting it only as much as necessary, with their spitting
jet-tubes. Our course turned downward into the shadows of knotty rock
masses near the old Xian camp.
We went through another airlock, and into a tapered, cylindrical
chamber. Figures like the others were there, craggy, yet obliquely
charming in form. There was what must have been a propulsive mechanism,
perhaps refined by ages of development, until matter was totally
converted to energy.
And there was a crystal vat in which complicated grids were suspended
in gelatin. Deep in the menisculous, pearly medium were shapes, hardly
seen, though suggestive.
Kobolah spoke again: "You three even built small robots with great
pains to pay us a visit. So we thought that maybe you should truly
come. We shall see...."
I saw that odd, triangular head. I could fathom nothing from the eyes,
except perhaps a cold interest. But I felt tricked and trapped. As
far as our senses were concerned, we were here, not back in our ship.
Forgetting that, we had been off-guard there!
Can a robot have a fearsome headache? Suddenly I had one. Dizziness
and a blurring of consciousness was followed by panic. Suddenly I was
back in the _Intruder_, frantically unfastening the helmet of my space
armor, then casting off the control hood.
I staggered erect. Dr. Shane Lanvin grunted beside me. His usually mild
face was contorted. Jan gave a thick cry, her gloved hand on her brow.
Doc and she had also torn off their helmets and hoods.