Close to Critical Read Online Free PDF

hovering over another set of switches on the complex panel before him.
    "One of them's making it." It was the high voice again, and this time Raeker had to answer. "I've known these people for sixteen years, but I can't tell them from the attackers now. How can you identify them?" He let his glance shift briefly from the screens to the two nonhumans towering behind him.
    "The attackers have no axes, only knives and spears," pointed out the speaker calmly. The man hastily turned back to the screens. He could not be sure that the other was right; only three or four axes could be seen, and their wielders were not very clearly visible in the swirling press. He had not noticed any lack of axes in the hands of the attackers as they came up the hill, in the brief moments after they became visible to the robot and before battle was joined; but there was no reason to doubt that someone else might have. He wished he knew Dromm and its people better. He made no answer to the slender giant's comment, but from then on watched the axes which flashed in the firelight. These really did seem to be working their way toward the huts which rimmed the top of the hill. Some failed to make it; more than one of the tools which had so suddenly become weapons ceased to swing as the robot's eyes watched.
    But some did get there. For half a minute a four-armed, scaly figure stood at one of the hut doors, facing outward and smashing the crests of all attackers who approached too close. Three others, all apparently injured, crawled toward him and under the sweep of the powerful arms to take shelter in the building; one of these remained in the doorway, crouching with two spears and guarding the axeman from low thrusts. Then another defender battered his way to the side of the first, and the two retreated together inside the hut. None of the cave-dwellers seemed eager to follow.
    "Are you all inside, Nick?" Raeker asked.
    "Five of us are here. I don't know about the others. I'm pretty sure Alice and Tom are dead, though; they were near me at the beginning, and I haven't seen them for some time."
    "Give a call to those who aren't with you. I'll have to do something very soon, and I don't want any of you hurt by it."
    "They must either be safe or dead. The fighting has stopped; it's a lot easier to hear you than it was. You'd better do whatever it is without worrying about us; I think Swift's people are all heading toward you. Only a couple are outside the door here; the others are forming a big ring around where I saw you last. You haven't moved, have you?"
    "No," admitted Raeker, "and you're right about the ring. One of the biggest of them is walking right up to me. Make sure you are all under cover - preferably somewhere where light won't reach you. I'll give ten seconds."

    "All right," Nick answered. "We're getting under tables."
    Raeker counted a slow ten, watching Hie approaching creatures in the screens as he did so. At the last number his fingers tripped a gang bar which closed twenty switches simultaneously; and as Nick described it later, "the world took fire."
    It was only the robot's spotlights, unused now for years but still serviceable. It seemed quite impossible to the human watchers that any optical organs sensitive enough to work on the few quanta of light which reach the bottom of Tenebra's atmosphere could possible stand any such radiance; the lights themselves had been designed with the possibility in mind that they might have to pierce dust or smoke - they were far more powerful'than were really needed by the receptors of the robot itself.
    The attackers should have been blinded instantly, according to Raeker's figuring. The sad fact slowly emerged that they were not.
    They were certainly surprised. They stopped their advance for a moment, and chattered noisily among themselves; then the giant who was in front of the others strode right up to the robot, bent over, and appeared to examine one of the lights in detail. The men had long ago