Drummond swore impatiently at his skepticism. "At any rate, one of us
might get back to the converters."
"And leave the other here?"
"He can say he's Jackson and order an attack in force on the ship."
"I don't follow you."
"Skidding the ship in a circle with the exhaust blowers on," Drummond
explained patiently, "will take care of _ten thousand_ clunkers."
He dropped from the ledge and raced into the cave. None of the robots
stirred. Either they hadn't noticed Drummond's departure, Angus
reasoned, or they weren't concerned because they knew the cave led
nowhere.
* * * * *
The sun came up, daubing the cliff with splotches of orange and purple
and striking up scintillations in the beads of dew on the robots' backs.
And still the tiresomely shouted veneration continued.
Angus paced the ledge, stopping occasionally to stare into the
impenetrable shadows of the cave. He checked his watch. Five hours to
go--five hours, and then time would be meaningless for the rest of his
life, with the ship destroyed.
It was unlikely that rescue would come. The wrecked spacer's automatic
distress signals had gone out in an ever-expanding sphere for a hundred
years, and he and Drummond had been the only humans to hear them.
Trade routes were pretty stable in this section of the Galaxy now. And
it was hardly possible that, within the next ten or twenty years, one
would be opened up that would intercept the SOS that had lured them
here.