"My friends," said Rog Tanlu, "I regret having drawn you into this. Leave now; you may be able to escape undetected. But I shall await them here, in this cavern which is very familiar to me."
Doc Champ shook his head. I knew he wouldn't fall in with that plan.
"We're both armed," he told Rog Tanlu, slapping the automatic that sagged in his pocket. "We'll hang around awhile."
I guess I like this quality in Doc. Maybe it was partly the reason why I took to him.
Well, I backed up the little guy ... but I thought he was wrong. That fight—if there was going to be a fight—wasn't ours. And I couldn't just see men with pistols getting very far against those fountain-pen affairs, like Rog Tanlu had. And then, there was that Eyoaoc Eiioiei.... The whole thing was a little beyond my depths. I thought Doc was wrong to mix up in something we didn't know a cussed thing about—and I still think so!
Rog Tanlu had switched off his light. We stood there in the dark listening. But we didn't hear a sound.
I groped around and touched Doc's arm.
"Doc," I whispered, "let's slip down to the entrance and find out what's going on."
Although my words shouldn't have carried six feet, that robot thing must have heard me—and, stranger still, must have understood.
For immediately I heard a subdued, metallic jabbering, then Rog Tanlu's voice speaking urgently to Doc and me.