The first wave approached and he fought them off. But slowly, by their strength of numbers, he was forced to the floor, his wheels knocked from under him, tendrils covering his arms.
They lifted him, marched to the center of the room. He was caught, He had failed! Mankind would continue in their power, they would be bred like sheep forever; mere brains to these mind-vampires. He had been their only hope....
The Capeks were apparently waiting for orders, holding him there in the middle of the room. He was held tightly by a dozen of them; the others returned to the compartment and the door closed. Rod tried commanding them to release him, to no avail. They remained silent and seemingly with little interest but to hold him there. They were probably mere workers, he thought, with practically no independent impulses.
Glancing helplessly about the room, Rod noticed a glowing metal disk near his ring of captors. It was but a few feet from him, gleaming with a dull, reddish light; a glass tube encased in wire mesh. He had overlooked it before. Looking about, he saw it to be the only unshattered instrument in the room. It might be the main tube!
Rod grew limp in their tendrils for a moment. Then suddenly he lunged backward, away from the tube with all his strength. It had the desired effect. The Capeks tugged at him. He went limp again. At the sudden cessation of his pull, the machines fell backward and he was forced forward upon their sprawled bodies.
Swiftly he enlongated his neck. He raised it high, lashed down at the tube with his eye. Rod saw the mesh cave in and the glass shatter. Then his eye burst and all was black. He was jerked to his feet again, and despite the rattle of his captors' machinery, he felt a strange silence. The dynamos had halted. The power was off!
Then the tendrils of the Capeks fell away from his arms. He heard the clatter of cylinders falling to the floor. He could see nothing. But something in his inner consciousness told him to flee; some deep intuition older than thought, born of a time when the desert beyond the city was lush vegetation and furry animals roamed its dawn trails, an ancient wisdom cried of danger in the darkness.
He remembered he had been facing the door. Arms outstretched, he moved forward, hit the wall, groped about and finally found the opening.
He moved outside into the street. He remembered which way to go, but blind he could never find the building in which he had left the humans. He could be of little assistance now if he did. And he had lost so much time.