"Stand up, Toory."
He stood with the rose-glow of the coming sunlight glistening on him.
Now he could see Miss Babs clearly, low down among the rocks, with men
around her. One of the men was whispering to her.
"Turn your back to us, Toory," she called suddenly.
He turned around. His knees clanked with their trembling, but he
steadied himself.
"Now lie down, Toory. Flat--all the way down."
He lay staring up the wavering eye-beams. He could see the clouds high
up, flushed with the dawnlight. An aircar was drifting past, up there,
but an aircar was not a danger to Miss Babs.
"We're sending a man up to take the fuse out, Toory. Turn over, face
down. That's it. Do this for me, Toory."
He lay with his face pressing into the rocky ground. The rock was
dark and blurred, so close to his eye-lenses. He could remember how
proud he'd felt down there in the warm sunlit valley standing under
wait-command beside Miss Babs. She had said that the little brook as
it babbled over the stones was laughing. It was always happy, because
it laughed all the time. How he wished that he could hear the brook now.
"The Erg man is coming," the girl called. "Don't move, Toory."
It was very strange that Miss Babs would order this. He tried
desperately to reason why, but he could not.
Now he heard her voice again. "Will you lie quiet, Toory, while he
takes out the fuse? Answer me."
"Yes, Miss Babs. I will lie quiet."
Now the Erg man was bending over him. He pressed his face down harder
against the rock. And there was Babs' voice calling once more--her
voice with something in it that Toory never had heard directed at him
before. It was the voice humans used to one another.
"Goodbye, Toory."
He was so desperately frightened....
The fuse of Model 2 RY came out with a little click. The hissing,
throbbing tumult inside the glistening body faded into silence. The
turgid red eye-beams, down against the rock, went dark. Something
which had been was gone, and there was left only a motionless piece of
machinery.