Chapter VII

Norden cursed his own stupidity, and estimated the time it would take. If they decided to come in, and spray the area with their own force, or to capture it, he had several minutes. If they sent one of their super-speed torpedoes, he was on borrowed time. His mind raced furiously.

With a few minutes to spare, he could tune the tube he'd designed as a weapon, and spray them with that. Its straight-line efficiency would insure that no dangerous amount of its radiation would reach the men two thousand miles away. Vengeance was his for the taking.

He reached for the other tube, hesitated, and picked up a piece of paper and a pencil. The men at the base had the working plans of his device by now. They had to be warned how dangerous it would be not to make absolutely sure that their radiation generators and detectors couldn't spill dangerous radiation at random. Also that the Aliens could detect an inefficient search ray.

Norden headed for the flexible seal at a full run, while his steady hands pencilled the final information on the radiation frequencies needed. He broke through into the air of the entrance, yanked the diagrams off the pick-up rack, and snapped in the new instructions. He turned with a single motion, and headed for the workroom again. And stopped!

Beyond the entrance, the gleaming fins of a rocket were visible. And the red light on the airlock indicated someone was coming through. As his eyes focussed, he saw the inner lock open, and Miles and Pat emerged in the red glare.

They started to shout something, but he cut them off. "For God's sake, stay here. There's no air beyond. Alien ship!"

He jumped through the seal. His hands swept up the tube that was to be a weapon, and his eyes darted to the screen. The pip was bigger now, and at maximum brightness. The Alien ship must be only tens of thousands of miles above, braking down to attack with deadly precision.

Less than a hundred feet away, the two humans waited, at the mercy of any energy that might spill from his weapon! He would have to score with a perfect piece of marksmanship, with all the radiation directed in a straight line.

The formulae of its propagation seemed like an endless belt in his mind. He tightened the helix of wire about the radio-active lode, trying to be sure they were even. With time, there were a number of things he might have done, but he had no time to spare. He might harm Miles and Pat--but the Alien beam would leave nothing to chance.

The thought of Miles and Pat jolted through his mind in a delayed reaction. They'd seen him come into this airless space without a helmet. They knew now he wasn't human! Discovered! _Explode the ..._

"No!" he shouted silently into the airless room. He had to get the Alien first!

He had no idea how much time he had left as he snapped a flashlight battery into place, and tried to line the weapon into resonance with the detector settings. He lifted his eyes, to stare up through the open roof of the building. He knew there should be a faint black dot in the sky, but he couldn't see it against the blackness of space.

He lifted the weapon, pointed it toward where the Aliens should be, and depressed the little trigger, moving the rheostat back and forth to be sure he had the lethal frequency well covered.

He felt a tremor on the floor beside him, and his eyes caught a glimpse of Pat at his side before he could force his gaze toward space again. She was shouting something inside her helmet.

Then he caught the first visible sign of the Alien ship, already within miles of the building, and big enough to show in the side-light of the sun. It came rushing down in an unchecked plunge, apparently heading straight for him! He strained his eyes, tracing its path. Then he relaxed. It was moving sideways and would land a mile away. _The weapon had worked._ No ship would have risked such speed so near the surface if the pilot had been alive.

He gripped Pat by the shoulder, and dragged her to the floor, away from the threat of falling debris. There was no sound, but a tremendous jolt rocked the floor of the building, and for a terror-fraught moment the ground seemed to dance madly. A shaft of greenish-yellow radiance merged with a glaring red that lit up the sky for miles. The ship had struck at a terrific speed--fast enough to reduce everything inside it to a pulp. The instant everything was quiet, Norden sprang to his feet.

_Now! There is no time to be lost!_

He caught the thought in time. He couldn't let himself explode in the workroom. He had to get outside, away from the two humans. The compulsion squeezed and writhed in his mind, and he could not throw it off. It was tenfold as strong as the previous commands--and the need to overcome it a hundred times as great.

He stumbled toward the seal as Pat stood by. His body slipped through the seal, and he almost bumped into Miles, who was apparently waiting for him. Norden had no spare effort for speech or thought. He headed dumbly for the airlock, determined to get outside as quickly as possible.

"Norden!" The general had grabbed his arm, and was following him. "Norden, if you go out there, I'm going with you. Whatever happens will happen to me, too. _You've got to listen!_"

He tried to force his way ahead, shaking his arm to free it. The other arm was also carrying a dead weight, and he could see Pat's face close to his own.

She was screaming at him. "Bill! Bill, you must listen! We knew it all along! We _knew_ you were a robot! It doesn't matter. If you explode, you'll take us with you!"

He hit the lock in savage desperation and the words froze meaninglessly in his ears as he held back the driving urge until he could escape from them.

Miles clung grimly. "It's the Aliens, Bill! They want you to explode. The damned Aliens who want to kill you! Do you love them so much you'll kill us all? Or do you hate them?"

Slowly it penetrated the red haze of torment in his mind. The Aliens wanted to kill him. They'd played with him, had turned him into a monster to do their malicious bidding. They'd given him nothing in return. And now they wanted everything. His own life, worthless though it might be--and the life of his friends.

The hate washed through him--the cold, hard hate that had a greater strength for its very lack of endocrine instability.

"I'm all right," he said slowly. "You're safe. You can go back to the base."

Miles stared at him with a warm and friendly understanding. "We really did know about you, Bill," he said. "That business about your being the only undetected human on the asteroid looked suspicious, and the psychologists weren't fooled. We were gambling on a chance to get some information on the Aliens' detector out of you before you could do anything dangerous.

"Hardwick was the only man who could have known enough to have any chance. With him dead, we had to hope they'd give you information enough to act in his place. Pat volunteered to watch you. And we had ultra-violet cameras in every room where you ever were, watching you every second."

He paused, but Norden could think of nothing to say. He looked at Pat for confirmation, and she nodded. "We set the whole thing up for you, Bill. But we found we were wrong. The Aliens had done too good a job on you for their own good. They made you too human--so human that you had to begin thinking _our_ way. After that business with Armsworth, we stopped worrying."

"But you came out here ..." he began.

"Not to spy on you, Bill," Miles told him. "Earth's evacuating the Moon, now that you found us weapons to handle the Aliens. We're needed to supervise things back at the factories. Pat and I just came to pick you up, when you wouldn't answer your calls. We're taking you home."

He stared at them silently, and there was a complex of feelings in his mind that made thinking almost impossible. Bitterness was heavier than anything else.

"That's fine for someone who won't hate an enemy--though you're quick enough to employ hate when it's useful." He looked at Miles steadily. "What about the rest of the world? Will they welcome a bomb-carrying robot monster as a friend?" Bill Norden wanted to know.

Miles put his hands on Norden's shoulders, while Pat went back into the workroom. "Sit down on the desk, Bill," he urged. "The only people who know are the two of us, and Jim--the psychologist who predicted exactly how you'd react from the beginning. He also gave you a test that first day that involved our top-grade X-ray machine--not one of those fluoroscopic toys. It's a good thing you've got your brains all through you, because when I get done, you'll be literally empty-headed."

Pat came back with a collection of equipment. Norden stared, trying to sit up. "You must be insane. Do you want to be killed if I blow. Are all humans crazy?"

Miles tightened his grip on Norden's shoulder. "Hold still. It shouldn't hurt. We're going to leave the communication gadget where it is, as it may be useful, later. But that bomb must come out." He smiled abruptly. "As to humans--well, you should know."