"No," Toory said.
In the confused darkness of her blindness the girl was stammering
something. Toory did not hear it. His swinging, heavy hand reached down
and she recoiled from it, as if terrified by his inhuman strength. In
his awkwardness he reached out again, and she gave a little cry, and
wilted down at his feet.
He said, "Miss Babs, I am sorry. I did not mean to frighten you. I will
carry you home now."
It was as though a floodgate had broken, releasing in Toory an enormous
surge of shining confidence. Higgins had backed further down the path,
and Toory's eye-beams swung to his pallid, panic-stricken face.
"You keep away from me!" Higgins gasped.
"No," Toory said.
"You got to take orders from me! Do you hear?"
* * * * *
Toory moved from the fallen Babs, and started remorselessly toward
Higgins. In wild panic Higgins stooped, picked up a stone and sent it
clanking against the glistening plate of Toory's chest. Toory continued
to advance, his hands extended with the work-pincers out.
For just an instant, like a terror-stricken animal with its foot in a
trap, Higgins stood shaking. Then he turned and fled down the path. To
no avail. With monstrous clanking bounds Toory was on him as he reached
the garden gate.
It was all a strange and terrible confusion to Toory. Dominating him
was the thought that he must carry Miss Babs back in safety, just as if
she had been hit by an autocar and needed instant care.
Now he had caught Higgins up, and was pressing the frail human body
against his massive chest. There may have been an instant when Higgins
screamed and struggled. But if there was, it was soon over. The
mangled thing became quiet.
Toory found himself on the highway that passed along at the foot of the
hill. Beyond the steeply-rising, ragged cliff was dark against the sky,
and a light was suddenly bathing Toory as he stood irresolute in the
road with his burden--the headlights of an oncoming autocar. It ground
to a stop, and men leaped out and stood gasping.
"It's Doret's new model. It has killed a man!"
Another car came along and the distress sirens of both cars started
wailing. Then a police car arrived; and still Toory stood confused and
trembling, grasping the thing that had been a man. It was terribly
frightening, because so many new thoughts seemed to be needed to make
sense of the confusion.
Now he could hear the men. "Don't try to give it orders, it might leap
at us!"
And a voice from back at the garden. "Here's Babs Doret. It must have
killed her too!"
_No--no._ That was wrong. Surely he had not hurt Miss Babs. He saw them
up in the garden, bending over her. Somebody shouted, "She's fainted!"
He didn't want anyone to hurt Miss Babs. He would not permit anyone to
hurt her, because he had a permanent-order to protect her.