"It will be over in a little while, Ted. Probably just a group of teen-agers looking for thrills." He laughed drily. "They'll end up with blanked memories and new faces like those who tried before them."
"Listen," muttered Rusche.
In the lightlessness, and above the wailing of the terrified people about them, they could hear the scuff of running feet. They were coming closer at a swift pace. In a moment the runners would collide with them!
Duggan's years of blindness had given him the ability to judge and gauge distance from sound. At the proper instant he pounced, his hands clamping around a body, and a second body crashed into the leader. They went down in a tangle.
He heard Rusche shouting and fists battering and the tinkle of metal or crystal on metal. He was fighting desperately, his super mech's strength overtaxed. The unseen man's hands tore at his neck and shoulder, ripping away the synthetic flesh and baring the complex framework beneath.
Then his hand caught an arm and he exerted the full strength of his mech power, until now carefully subdued. The entire arm tore away from its shoulder. And yet the wounded man continued to attack.
It was only then that he realized this must be a super mech. The criminals must have stolen one or two super mechs and were using them in this robbery.
He was ruthless, then. He wrenched away the other arm. He battered at the unseen torso. The feet of the desperate mech smashed at his knees and thighs, staggering him. Then he bore the armless torso of the mech backward and fell upon it.
The mech went limp, its mentrols blanked by the distant criminal who controlled it.