by Perry Rhodan
Gallik nodded to Gunnarson. "Over there with the wounded," he ordered.
The Swede picked up Heffner carefully and carried him. Stumpy moaned softly.
Gallik tried not to hear it. The first hole had broken through in the hatch door and Gallik thought he saw a flash of movement behind it. Gunnarson came back and picked up Owesian. Solensky lost control and fired a shot at the smoldering door.
Gallik quickly shoved the other's weapon down and shook his head. The Swede signaled that he had brought the wounded men under cover.
"We need you over here, Sven!" called Gallik.
He heard a. murmur of protest from Owesian but ignored it. Gunnarson came running over and Gallik signaled him to take up a position close to the door.
He and Solensky posted themselves on the opposite side.
"Better join the other wounded men," Gallik told Kakuta. "It's too dangerous for you here."
"You think I'm going to let you do my fighting for me?" retorted the Japanese mutant angrily. He joined Gunnarson just as the last fragments of the door plate melted and dripped to the deck.
Either the robots hadn't expected any more resistance or they must have thought their human enemies had retreated. The first machine rolled into the room and only came to a stop after moving 10 feet. Gallik and Kakuta fired and the robot melted under the concentrated blast.
The next robot was more cautious. Its weapon arm extended through the opening briefly but didn't draw back quickly enough because Gunnarson's practiced eye found its target. Gallik knew that so far they were just lucky but they wouldn't be able to hold out for long in this position.
But at that moment the opposite door opened and Capt. Brazo Alkher stormed into the room at the head of his small group. Gallik let out a genuine Indian warhoop but forgot to watch his own door. Four robots entered simultaneously.
Their weirdly-shaped forms seemed to move awkwardly across the floor. Then something strange happened. Apparently ignoring the Terrans completely, they simply moved into the center of the cargo hold. Gallik observed them in disbelief. Alkher and his companions had come to a halt and were also watching the bizarre spectacle. Other robots kept coming in but they made no move to attack the men.
"What the heck's going on?" Gallik asked the teleporter. Kakuta raised his weapon. "Maybe we should ask less questions and do more shooting," he said. "If they're all going to come in here at once it isn't going to be good for our health!" By now at least 30 robots had assembled but still more followed them. They were all shapes and sizes, Gallik noted. Practically no two were alike.
Just then, Pucky came waddling in through the opposite door and raised his little arms triumphantly. "Perry's arrived with ten boats full of troops!" he chirped. "He'll be here in a few minutes." Gallik swallowed hard and thought: could this explain the strange actions of the robots? Were they trying to show that they were ready to surrender? Almost 50 robots had pressed into a compact group in the center of the hold. Gunnarson wanted to approach them but something told Gallik to hold him back.
"Take it easy, Sven," he warned. "We still don't know what this is all about." Owesian had pulled himself up beside one of the disposal units and he waved to Alkher. Even Heffner had gotten onto his elbows to look at the uncanny spectacle. Now all available robots appeared to be present because no more were coming in.
"Now Perry's on board!" called Pucky.
Then it started! Gallik couldn't have said which robot had begun to generate the change but he was sure it came from the middle of the mechanical dogpile.
The metal bodies of the robots began to take on a reddish glow as if they were on fire inside.
Which was more or less what was happening. Gallik's eyes widened as he watched the process. It reminded him of a junk yard going up in smoke.
Individual units melted until they were unrecognizable and finally the entire group collapsed in a common mass of molten wreckage.
"That's crazy!" groaned Gunnarson. "They're destroying themselves!" The robots had collected en masse to commit a form of positronic hari-kari.
They had apparently decided to destroy themselves when they detected that the Terran troop boats were getting ready to transfer their fighters to the Hat-Lete. There seemed to be only one explanation: the robots wanted to keep anything from falling into enemy hands that they could learn something from.
As Gallik stared at the pile of smoldering hot metal he wondered what kind of robots these were. It was a sure bet they were not at all like their Arkonide and Terran counterparts. There was something about them that made them different—something definitely different. There would be many questions left unanswered.
Where had these weird entities come from? What was their purpose? Gallik knew that he couldn't answer such questions. The heat from the melted mass finally reached him and he drew back involuntarily.
Then something happened that Gallik would never forget in his life. Through the shattered hatch opening came a half-wrecked robot. The machine seemed to move clumsily and with a special effort, now and then tending to wander and change direction. But it kept correcting its course toward its sole objective: the pile of robots in the center of the hold.
Solensky raised his weapon but Gallik held him back. "Let him go," he ordered.
The robot finally reached the smoking clump of wreckage. For some time it merely stood there facing the remains of its own kind. Then it too followed their example and melted itself down. The sight made Gallik shudder.
"That was the last of them," said Gunnarson brusquely.
Marching footsteps were heard outside in the corridor. There were shouted commands and suddenly a number of neatly uniformed figures appeared. And all of a sudden Gallik felt unutterably weary. A tall, slender figure stepped through the hatchway and came up to him. It took him a moment to recognize who it was.
"Sir!" Gallik exclaimed.
Rhodan looked at him gravely. Then he glanced over at Kakuta who was leaning slumped against the wall. He sensed the weariness of these men. He could see it in their eyes—the traces of almost superhuman effort they had expended, the terrors they had gone through in the face of the incomprehensible.
Alkher approached him followed by Leggert and Pearson who were supporting Ras Tschubai between them, and Pucky came waddling behind them. Rhodan felt a surge of relief when he realized that no lives had been forfeited here.
"If there are no objections, sir," said Gallik quietly, "we'd like to pull out of here."
"Of course, Corporal," Rhodan agreed. Gallik left the cargo room with out even looking to see if anybody was following him. Medical orderlies hurried past him with stretchers for the wounded. Gallik staggered onward. Somebody said something to him but he simply kept on going until he reached the locks. He entered a personnel carrier and collapsed into the first seat he could find.
• • •
Dr. Carl Riebsam pressed his fingertips together and gazed thoughtfully at those who were assembled in the Control Central of the Theodorich. "After making a probability analysis," he said, "It appears that the robots of the fragment ship could only have originated from Mechanica. We can assume that they are machines that have perfected themselves in the course of many thousands of years and even made further improvements." He smiled at Rhodan. "Of course that doesn't clear up any of our questions. We are aware of their original home world, but from what point are they conducting their present operations? What seems more important in my view is another question: what's behind their despotic expansion and their vicious attacks?" The Hat-Lete had long since been taken to Earth by a salvage ship of the Solar Fleet so that the Arkonide vessel could be given a thorough inspection.
The crew of the Theodorich was still concerned with the problem of the fragment ship.
John Marshall cleared his throat and seemed to choose his words carefully as he spoke. "After thinking this over, following a talk I had with Pucky, I've decided to tell you about something that I thought at first was a hallucination.
I can confirm that Pucky got the same impression that I did." Rhodan leaned forward tensely in his chair. "Tell us, John," he urged the mutant chief.
"It must have been when the robots were destroying themselves," Marshall recalled. "We had just boarded the Hat-Lete when I sensed an impulse of remorse from somewhere but it vanished immediately and was replaced by soundless laughter"
"That's right," interjected Pucky. "I detected the laughter, too, and it came from no human!" Rhodan looked pensively at Dr. Riebsam. "But it's impossible that such an impulse could have come from the robots," he said.
"Nobody's saying that," replied Marshall, "but anyway you can be sure that both of us heard it." Rhodan stroked his forehead. He had to accept the mutants' testimony. The enemy had destroyed itself to avoid any experimental investigation but at the same time there had been this mocking laughter. Who could manage to laugh in the face of death? A human? Never! Only madmen could laugh in such a situation.
Rhodan recalled the molten clump of metal that had been all that remained of the robots. Somehow the shadow of death loomed above and beyond that cargo hold.
KILLERS FROM HYPERSPACE
Copyright © 1977
Ace Books
by arrangement with Arthur Moewig Verlag
All Rights Reserved.