"Now? You mean we're going to make a dash for the space ship now?"
"Of course now! We've got to clear out of here before they carry out
their threat to terminate us!"
* * * * *
There was no light outside the igloo. House and lab and mine stood
out like three jeweled domes, reflecting their rays onto the ragged
surface, glinting unexpectedly from upthrust peaks in the distance.
Hen and Sofi crouched against the outside of the housing unit, staring
across the patchwork of black shadow and light at the lab.
"Don't talk," he cautioned Sofi over the radiophones built into their
helmets. "The robots' auditory apparatus is sensitive to radio waves.
They may tune in on us."
"What the hell did you try to do? Make them invincible?"
He said, "We tried to build them with controls, but--don't you
see?--those were weaknesses, flaws! The machine remained dead. The
first law of life is self preservation. We had to make the machine
self-regulating, independent, to produce awareness. Now shut up! Don't
ask me any more questions."
He led off into the darkness away from the lab, away from the mine and
space ship It was too risky to attempt passing the lab. The light was
apt to reflect from their suits, discover their presence to the robots
inside. But by describing a circle he could avoid the lighted areas and
come up behind the dilapidated tramp freighter.
He glanced upward at the stars, impressing their position on his mind.
The constellations were little altered. He found Polaris in the tail of
the little dipper. It was not the axis star as it was on Earth, but it
served to fix his sense of direction in the impenetrable blackness.
They tripped and stubbed their toes, stumbled into shallow fissures,
climbed sharp-edged crests. Sofi, forgetting the radiophone, muttered
several well-chosen expletives to herself. They would have done credit
to a spaceman. Hen was so shocked, he forgot to reprimand her.
In a few minutes the lights of the igloos reappeared to guide them,
the vast black bulk of the tramp freighter screening part of the
mining unit. They crept up to the ship, and hugging its shadow, moved
noiselessly towards the port. Light from the reduction plant picked
them out brightly as they came around the stern.
Hen's stomach contracted. There was a sudden bitter taste in his mouth.
He halted so abruptly that Sofi bumped against his shoulder.
The port was open. The gleaming functional mechanism that was R-3 stood
complacently in the entrance.
The space ship was being guarded.
* * * * *
The robot caught sight of the humans at the same moment. His reaction,
although mechanical, was almost as instantaneous as their instinctive
one.
He moved to block the entrance, sent out a call for help.
Hen, guessing his intention, tuned his helmet receiver to the robot's
wave length. R-3's mechanical voice rang suddenly inside his helmet.
"... _attacking the space ship! Aid! Aid! Father attacking the space
ship! Aid!_"
Hen switched back to the girl's wave length. "Run," he commanded
tersely. "He's calling for help. He'll have the lot of them down on our
heads."
Suiting action to words, he took to his heels, plunging for the housing
unit.
"Lock ourselves in!" he grunted.
"_But the ship!_" Sofi wailed over her radiophone.
"Might as well try to get past a tank as R-3," he panted. He saw four
of the robots break from the laboratory, turn to intercept them.
"Faster," he cried. "If we don't get back to the igloo we're done for!
These suits haven't but a seven hours oxygen supply!"
[Illustration: _"Faster," he cried. "If we don't get back to the igloo
we're done for!"_]
He swung sharply to the right, traveling in sixty-foot leaps like an
ungainly grasshopper, to jump completely over the head of the closest
robot.
He over-estimated the last jump, smashed into the tough plastic wall
of the igloo. He slithered to the ground, half dazed, as Sofi whipped
inside, started to close the lock. Hen got his foot in the crack just
in time.
"What the hell are you trying to do?" he roared wrathfully. "Lock me
out?"
He yanked the door open, flung himself into the compartment. He got it
barred just as the robots reached the igloo.
They milled around outside a moment, then trooped back to the
laboratory, leaving one of their number, R-6, on guard.
"_We're prisoners!_" Sofi breathed through the radiophone.
Hen decided it was childish not to speak. He growled, "Yes," in a voice
which he hoped conveyed the depth of contempt, but Sofi didn't seem to
notice it. Hell, she was probably too frightened to even realize that
she had tried to lock him out.
As soon as the pressure reached normal, they left the lock, trooped
dejectedly up the incline to the sun deck, and pulled off their oxygen
suits.
"Keep them handy," said Hen ominously when Sofi started to put them
away. "We'd better get extra oxygen containers, too."
The girl bit her lip. Her cheeks were flushed, her large blue eyes
starry with fright. "Then--then you think they'll try to break in here?"
"Of course they will! We're a menace to their continued existence. If
we could just get hold of an atom gun, though. R-3 sounded frightened!"
"Frightened?" asked Sofi. She was still breathing heavily, but she had
begun to quiet down. "Now who's reading emotion into the robots?"
He said with a puzzled expression, "It wasn't so much the nuance as
his choice of words. 'Father is attacking the space ship! Aid! Aid!'
He gave every appearance of being as frightened as we were. It's
impossible, but they seem to be developing emotions!"
Sofi dropped weakly in a chair, clasped her arms around her knees. "Why
should it be impossible?"
"You sound like R-7." He began pacing the sun deck. "Emotion results
from glandular activity. The robots don't have glands."
"They've got their counterparts."
"Maybe," he admitted doubtfully. "You're referring to the metabolism
that breaks down the rawstuffs and converts it into fuel,
lubrication--that sort of chemical change?"
She nodded.
"I don't know. Anyway, it's worth a try. If they really experience
fear, we might be able to bluff them."
"What are you going to do?" she asked breathlessly.
He said, "Remind them that every three Terran months a supply ship puts
in here. And if we're harmed they'll be destroyed."
"But what about the space ship? Couldn't they escape to another
asteroid? They'd never be located in the belt."
"It shouldn't occur to them," returned Hen thoughtfully. "Not unless
the idea reached them from us."