“BANK OF MANHATTAN
Pay Joe the sum of One Hundred Thrity-Five Dollars and Fifty Cents (135.50) R. Stormgren. “
As he laid the strip of paper beside the Pole, Karellen’s voice enquired:
“Exactly what are you doing?”
“We Stormgrens always pay our debts. The other two cheated, but Joe played fair. At least I never caught him out.”
He felt very gay and lightheaded, and quite forty years younger, as he walked to the door. The metal sphere moved aside to let him pass. He assumed that it was some kind of robot, and it explained how Karellen had been able to reach him through the unknown layers of rock overhead.
“Carry straight on for a hundred metres,” said the sphere, speaking in Karellen’s voice. “Then turn to the left until I give you further instructions.”
He strode forward eagerly, though he realized that there was no need for hurry. The sphere remained hanging in the corridor, presumably covering his retreat. A minute later he came across a second sphere, waiting for him at a branch in the corridor.
“You’ve half a kilometre to go,” it said. “Keep to the left until we meet again.”
Six times he encountered the spheres on his way to the open. At first he wondered if, somehow, the robot was managing to keep ahead of him; then he guessed that there must be a chain of the machines maintaining a complete circuit down into the depths of the mine. At the entrance a group of guards formed a piece of improbable statuary, watched over by yet another of the ubiquitous spheres. On the hillside a few metres away lay the little flying machine in which Stormgren had made all his journeys to Karellen.