Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed from the waist down. But it couldn't happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic face. He said, voice muffled by the confines of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's face to move. "That is what I have named you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer. Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered. "We talk in the language of the mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens he'd seen on the creature's face had a counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought. That's quite an innovation. "Thank you," Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he had applied for this high-paying but man-killing job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar System's starways.