"A single runner. Just now."
"Where is he?" Hendricks asked sharply.
"The claws got him."
Major Hendricks grunted. "Here." He passed it to his companions. "I
think this is what we've been waiting for. They certainly took their
time about it."
"So they want to talk terms," Scott said. "Are we going along with
them?"
"That's not for us to decide." Hendricks sat down. "Where's the
communications officer? I want the Moon Base."
Leone pondered as the communications officer raised the outside
antenna cautiously, scanning the sky above the bunker for any sign of
a watching Russian ship.
"Sir," Scott said to Hendricks. "It's sure strange they suddenly came
around. We've been using the claws for almost a year. Now all of a
sudden they start to fold."
"Maybe claws have been getting down in their bunkers."
"One of the big ones, the kind with stalks, got into an Ivan bunker
last week," Eric said. "It got a whole platoon of them before they got
their lid shut."
"How do you know?"
"A buddy told me. The thing came back with--with remains."
"Moon Base, sir," the communications officer said.
On the screen the face of the lunar monitor appeared. His crisp
uniform contrasted to the uniforms in the bunker. And he was clean
shaven. "Moon Base."
"This is forward command L-Whistle. On Terra. Let me have General
Thompson."
The monitor faded. Presently General Thompson's heavy features came
into focus. "What is it, Major?"
"Our claws got a single Russian runner with a message. We don't know
whether to act on it--there have been tricks like this in the past."
"What's the message?"
"The Russians want us to send a single officer on policy level over to
their lines. For a conference. They don't state the nature of the
conference. They say that matters of--" He consulted the slip.
"--Matters of grave urgency make it advisable that discussion be
opened between a representative of the UN forces and themselves."
He held the message up to the screen for the general to scan.
Thompson's eyes moved.
"What should we do?" Hendricks said.
"Send a man out."
"You don't think it's a trap?"
"It might be. But the location they give for their forward command is
correct. It's worth a try, at any rate."
"I'll send an officer out. And report the results to you as soon as he
returns."
"All right, Major." Thompson broke the connection. The screen died. Up
above, the antenna came slowly down.
Hendricks rolled up the paper, deep in thought.
"I'll go," Leone said.
"They want somebody at policy level." Hendricks rubbed his jaw.
"Policy level. I haven't been outside in months. Maybe I could use a
little air."
"Don't you think it's risky?"
Hendricks lifted the view sight and gazed into it. The remains of the
Russian were gone. Only a single claw was in sight. It was folding
itself back, disappearing into the ash, like a crab. Like some hideous
metal crab....
"That's the only thing that bothers me." Hendricks rubbed his wrist.
"I know I'm safe as long as I have this on me. But there's something
about them. I hate the damn things. I wish we'd never invented them.
There's something wrong with them. Relentless little--"
"If we hadn't invented them, the Ivans would have."
Hendricks pushed the sight back. "Anyhow, it seems to be winning the
war. I guess that's good."
"Sounds like you're getting the same jitters as the Ivans." Hendricks
examined his wrist watch. "I guess I had better get started, if I want
to be there before dark."
* * * * *
He took a deep breath and then stepped out onto the gray, rubbled
ground. After a minute he lit a cigarette and stood gazing around him.
The landscape was dead. Nothing stirred. He could see for miles,
endless ash and slag, ruins of buildings. A few trees without leaves
or branches, only the trunks. Above him the eternal rolling clouds of
gray, drifting between Terra and the sun.
Major Hendricks went on. Off to the right something scuttled,
something round and metallic. A claw, going lickety-split after
something. Probably after a small animal, a rat. They got rats, too.
As a sort of sideline.
He came to the top of the little hill and lifted his fieldglasses. The
Russian lines were a few miles ahead of him. They had a forward
command post there. The runner had come from it.
A squat robot with undulating arms passed by him, its arms weaving
inquiringly. The robot went on its way, disappearing under some
debris. Hendricks watched it go. He had never seen that type before.
There were getting to be more and more types he had never seen, new
varieties and sizes coming up from the underground factories.
Hendricks put out his cigarette and hurried on. It was interesting,
the use of artificial forms in warfare. How had they got started?
Necessity. The Soviet Union had gained great initial success, usual
with the side that got the war going. Most of North America had been
blasted off the map. Retaliation was quick in coming, of course. The
sky was full of circling disc-bombers long before the war began; they
had been up there for years. The discs began sailing down all over
Russia within hours after Washington got it.
* * * * *
But that hadn't helped Washington.
The American bloc governments moved to the Moon Base the first year.
There was not much else to do. Europe was gone; a slag heap with dark
weeds growing from the ashes and bones. Most of North America was
useless; nothing could be planted, no one could live. A few million
people kept going up in Canada and down in South America. But during
the second year Soviet parachutists began to drop, a few at first,
then more and more. They wore the first really effective
anti-radiation equipment; what was left of American production moved
to the moon along with the governments.
All but the troops. The remaining troops stayed behind as best they
could, a few thousand here, a platoon there. No one knew exactly where
they were; they stayed where they could, moving around at night,
hiding in ruins, in sewers, cellars, with the rats and snakes. It
looked as if the Soviet Union had the war almost won. Except for a
handful of projectiles fired off from the moon daily, there was almost
no weapon in use against them. They came and went as they pleased. The
war, for all practical purposes, was over. Nothing effective opposed
them.
* * * * *
And then the first claws appeared. And overnight the complexion of the
war changed.
The claws were awkward, at first. Slow. The Ivans knocked them off
almost as fast as they crawled out of their underground tunnels. But
then they got better, faster and more cunning. Factories, all on
Terra, turned them out. Factories a long way under ground, behind the
Soviet lines, factories that had once made atomic projectiles, now
almost forgotten.
The claws got faster, and they got bigger. New types appeared, some
with feelers, some that flew. There were a few jumping kinds.
The best technicians on the moon were working on designs, making them
more and more intricate, more flexible. They became uncanny; the Ivans
were having a lot of trouble with them. Some of the little claws were
learning to hide themselves, burrowing down into the ash, lying in
wait.
And then they started getting into the Russian bunkers, slipping down
when the lids were raised for air and a look around. One claw inside a
bunker, a churning sphere of blades and metal--that was enough. And
when one got in others followed. With a weapon like that the war
couldn't go on much longer.
Maybe it was already over.
Maybe he was going to hear the news. Maybe the Politburo had decided
to throw in the sponge. Too bad it had taken so long. Six years. A
long time for war like that, the way they had waged it. The automatic
retaliation discs, spinning down all over Russia, hundreds of
thousands of them. Bacteria crystals. The Soviet guided missiles,
whistling through the air. The chain bombs. And now this, the robots,
the claws--
The claws weren't like other weapons. They were _alive_, from any
practical standpoint, whether the Governments wanted to admit it or
not. They were not machines. They were living things, spinning,
creeping, shaking themselves up suddenly from the gray ash and darting
toward a man, climbing up him, rushing for his throat. And that was
what they had been designed to do. Their job.
They did their job well. Especially lately, with the new designs
coming up. Now they repaired themselves. They were on their own.
Radiation tabs protected the UN troops, but if a man lost his tab he
was fair game for the claws, no matter what his uniform. Down below
the surface automatic machinery stamped them out. Human beings stayed
a long way off. It was too risky; nobody wanted to be around them.
They were left to themselves. And they seemed to be doing all right.
The new designs were faster, more complex. More efficient.
Apparently they had won the war.
* * * * *
Major Hendricks lit a second cigarette. The landscape depressed him.
Nothing but ash and ruins. He seemed to be alone, the only living
thing in the whole world. To the right the ruins of a town rose up, a
few walls and heaps of debris. He tossed the dead match away,
increasing his pace. Suddenly he stopped, jerking up his gun, his body
tense. For a minute it looked like--
From behind the shell of a ruined building a figure came, walking
slowly toward him, walking hesitantly.