_Diabolical Exile of Time!_
Tugh saw us as we stood in our cage doorway. His thick barrel-like
figure rose erect, and from his parted cloak his arms waved with a
wild gesture of defiance and triumph. He was clearly outlined in the
red sunlight against the surface of the sea behind. We saw in one of
his hands a ray cylinder--and then his arm came down and he fired at
us. It was the white, disintegrating ray.
We were stricken by surprise, and stood for that moment transfixed in
our doorway. Tugh's narrow, intensely white beam leaped over the
intervening rocks; but it fell short of us. I saw that it had a range
of about a hundred feet. Over the muffled heavy silence of the
blood-red day the cripple's curse floated clear. He lowered his
weapon; and, heedless that we also might be armed, he leaped nimbly
past Mary's prostrate form and came shambling over the rocks directly
for me!
It stung me into action, and for all the chaotic rush of these
desperate moments my heart surged with relief. Mary was not dead!
Beyond Tugh's oncoming figure, as he shambled like an infuriated
charging bear over the rough rocky ground, I saw the white form of
Mary move! She was striving to sit up!
I held my ray cylinder--the one I had rescued from Migul. But its
range was no more than twenty feet: I had tested it; and Tugh's beam
had flashed a full hundred! I whirled on Larry.
"Get away from here, you and Tina! You can't help me!"
"George, listen--"
"He's coming. Larry--you damn fool, get away from here! It goes a
hundred feet, that ray of his: it'll be raking us in a minute! Run, I
tell you! Get to that line of rocks!"
* * * * *
Close behind our cage was a small broken ridge of rocks--strewn
boulders in a tumbled line some ten or fifteen feet in height. It
would afford shelter: there were broken places to give passage through
it. The ridge curved crescent-shaped behind our cage and ran down
toward the shore.
Larry and Tina stood white and confused. Larry panted, "But, George. I
can help you fight him! Hide here in the cage--"
"Get away, I tell you! It's his death or mine this time! I'll get him
if I can!"
I shoved Larry violently away and ducked back into our doorway. Only a
few breathless seconds had passed; Tugh was still several hundred feet
away from us. Larry and Tina ran behind the cage, darted between the
boulders of the ridge and vanished.
I crouched in the cage. Tugh was not visible from here. A moment
passed. Dared I remain? If I could get Tugh within twenty feet of me,
my shot was as good as his.... The silence was horrible. Was he coming
forward? Did he know I was in here? I thought surely he must have seen
Larry and Tina run away, and me dart in here: we had all been in plain
sight of him.
This horrible silence! Was he creeping up on me? Would he fire through
the doorway, or appear abruptly at the window? I could not tell where
to place myself in the room--and it could mean my life or death.
The silence was split by Tina calling, "Tugh, we have caught you!"
* * * * *
Her voice was to one side and behind our cage, calling defiance at
Tugh to distract his attention from me. Through the window I saw the
flash of his beam, slanting sidewise at Tina. I gauged the source of
his ray to be still some distance off, and crept to the door,
cautiously peering.
Tugh stood on the open rock surface. He had swung to my right and was
near the little ridge of rocks where it turned and bent down to the
shore. Behind me came Tina's voice again:
"At last we have you, Tugh!"
I saw Tina poised on the top of the ridge, partially behind me at the
elbow of the ridge-curve. She screamed her defiance, and again Tugh
fired at her. The beam slanted over me, but still was short.
Larry had vanished. Then I saw him, though Tugh did not. He had run
along behind the ridge, and appeared, now, well down toward the shore.
He was barely a hundred feet from the cripple. I saw him stoop, seize
a chunk of rock, and throw it. The missile bounded and passed close to
Tugh.
Larry instantly ducked back out of sight. The bounding stone startled
Tugh; he whirled toward it and fired over the ridge. Tina again had
changed her position and was shouting at him. They were trying to
exhaust his cylinder charges; and if they could do that he would be
helpless before me.
* * * * *
For a moment he stood as though confused. As he turned to gaze after
Tina, Larry flung another rock. But this time Tugh did not fire. He
started back toward where, by the wreckage of his cage, Mary was now
sitting up in a daze; then he changed his mind, whirled and fired
directly at my doorway. I was just beyond the effective range of his
beam, but it was truly aimed: I felt the horrible nauseous impact of
it, a shuddering, indescribable sickening of all my being. I staggered
back into the room and recovered my strength. A side window porte was
open; I leaped through it and landed upon the rocks, with the cage
between Tugh and me.
He fired again at the doorway. Tina had disappeared. Larry was now out
of range, standing on the ridge, shouting and hurling rocks.
But Tugh did not heed him. He was shambling for my doorway. He would
pass within twenty feet of me as I crouched outside the cage at its
opposite corner. I could take him by surprise.
And then he saw me. He was less than a hundred feet away. He changed
his direction and fired again, full at me. But I had had enough
warning, and, as the beam struck the cage corner, I ran back along the
outer wall of the cage and appeared at the other corner. Tugh came
still closer, his weapon pointed downward as he ran. Fifty feet away.
Not close enough!
I think, there at the last, that Tugh was wholly confused. Larry had
come much closer. He was shouting: and from the ridge behind me Tina
was shouting. Tugh ran, not for where I was lurking now, but for the
corner where a moment before he had seen me.
Now he was thirty feet from me.... Twenty.... Then nearer than that.
Wholly without caution he came forward.... I leaned around the edge of
the cage and fired. For one breathless instant the voices of Tina and
Larry abruptly hushed.
My beam struck Tugh in the chest. It caught him and clung to him,
bathing him in its spreading, intense white glare. He stopped in his
tracks; stood transfixed for one breathless, horrible instant! He was
so close that I could see the stupid surprise on his hideous features.
His wide slit of mouth gaped with astonishment.
* * * * *
My beam clung to him, but he did not fall! He stood astonished; then
turned and came at me! For just a moment I was stricken helpless there
before him. What manner of man was this? _He did not fall!_ My ray,
which had decomposed the body of Alent, the guard, and left his
skeleton stripped and bleached in an instant, did not harm Tugh! He
had walked into it, taken it full and he did not fall! He was still
alive!
I came to my senses and saw that Larry, seeing my danger, had run into
the open, dangerously close, and hurled a rock. It struck Tugh upon
the shoulder and deflected his aim, so that his flash went over me. I
saw Tugh whirl toward Larry, and I rushed forward, ripping loose the
cylinder of the ray projector from its restraining battery cord. In
the instant the cripple was turned half way from me I landed upon him,
and with all my strength brought the point of the small heavy cylinder
down on his skull. There was a strange splintering crack, and a wild,
eery scream from his voice. He fell, with me on top of him.
Crowning horror! Tugh lay motionless, twisted half on his back, his
thick arms outstretched on the rocks and his weapon still clutched in
his hand. Culminating, gruesome horror! I rose from his body and stood
shuddering. Amazing realization! The bulging misshapen head was
splintered open. And from it, strewn over the rocks, were tiny
intricate cogs and wheels, coils and broken wires!
He was not a man, but a Robot! A Super-Robot from some unknown era,
running amuck! A mechanism so cleverly fashioned by the genius of man
that it stood diabolically upon the threshhold of humanity!
A super-mechanical exile of Time! But its wild, irrational career of
destruction through the ages now was over. It lay inert, smashed and
broken at my feet....