"Not interested," he told her. "You better go back to your cabin and get another expoder. I'm keeping this one."
"No," Ina Haan's voice cut across the hostility of the tiny chamber laconically. "Give."
Jay shook his head. "I'm keeping it. And you better get another for Onin Tufor. I think we're about to have trouble."
As though to emphasize his words a prolonged ghastly shriek came from the fog. They heard broken shouted phrases, human words but with something bestial and terrible in their anguished pleading. The screams rose higher and higher—and choked off until almost inaudible.
The women's faces were pinched and terrified. They pressed close to Jay, forgetting that he was a man-made creature—a robot of living flesh—in their instinctive urge for the protection of the male.
"That was Zee Fivotu," he said soberly. "The Frogs have him. Probably tore him apart...."
"We'll be next," said Ina Haan, her voice thinned.
"Guard the lock, Ina," ordered Jay. "I'm going back after the animats. We'll need them all."
Ina Haan made no protest to Jay's assumption of authority nor did he think it strange that he should take control. From somewhere in his acquired memories he had dredged up adequate knowledge of the butrads' methods of attack.
He raced back through the corridor to the animat cabin. Onin was grinning, his long bony face alight.